One or many characters

From: origon
Date: 2002-04-16 03:00:06

This thread is about discussing if we should only allow one character per account, or several.

Theese are advantages i see in only allowing one:

Only having one character would build the bond to your person much stronger. You will then be more likely to roleplay, since your fear of loosing your life is stronger.

If you have several chars, you are more likely to do stupid stuff with the other chars (refering to other chars, since you will most likely make one your primary). It is easy to be lured into giving the primary char supreme power, and do the dangerous 'fetch the diamond from the mountain of doom'-quest with secondary char and give the diamond to the primary char. This would never have happened if it had not been the same person playing both.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-04-16 09:20:19
In-Reply-To: 1432

That's the problem.

If we have only one there will be less people fooling around with their chars. I would say only one. But since we have permanent death, this might sound a bit rough. OTOH this might be just a good thing. People should fear for their chars, just like IRL. And therefore every character is 'more unique'.

Only, there is another side: How to prevent pleyers having more than one char? How do we give accounts?

From: dazzt
Date: 2002-04-16 11:31:35
In-Reply-To: 1433

There was some discussion about this on the channel.

If account creation is handled manually by us (we handle applications and create accounts based on those), we can restrict the amount of characters to one per account. Some problems are solved this way. However, it'll make the learning curve higher, so for people that just want to try things out we should provide some 'newbie isle' (whatever) where people can test things out a bit without committing theirselves to apply for a real character etc.

Of course, this still doesn't prevent the you-killed-my-char-I'll-make-another-and-come-kill-you-ALL scenario.

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-23 04:15:26
In-Reply-To: 1434

hmm............I was thinking......(uh oh).......and we can't stop someone from signing up twice
email? I have 5 emails myself

and even if we control applications by hand....

if I tell you who I am, and then I tell you I'm Bob Jones from Texas, and then Mary Philips from Jamaica, you can't tell me I'm not unless you check IPs and say we're all at the same computer, so we'd basically have to restrict it to one per IP/household

and with that, who's to say we aren't still different people? what if my brother wants to play?

I just don't really think it's worth putting THAT much personal effort into just to control chars/person

if we do make it an application, though, it may help keep out the "1337 h4x0rz", not because we'll catch it in the application, but because most will not want to bother applying, when they can go somewhere else and just get in

and if they do get in, the serious gamers won't let them live for long (see previous thread from a while back on this topic)


oh and to the:
Of course, this still doesn't prevent the you-killed-my-char-I'll-make-another-and-come-kill-you-ALL scenario

I think that was discussed somewhere else a while ago too. if someone wants to do this, it'll be a lot of trouble for them, as they'll start as a weak character, and these killers are obviously stronger than he was, and definitely than he is now

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-04-16 23:45:47
In-Reply-To: 1434

I don't know........I think that multiple characters are not that bad of an idea.....a lot of people will want to try out the other races, different skill paths to take, and besides, our world's huge!! The likelihood that (in the beginning) the two characters will ever meet is very low!

I say you can limit the characters to 2 or 3, but I don't think one.

and if someone wants to make one character do all the dirty work and give it to his "primary", that secondary char also gets all the experience, thereby making it easy to kill the primary and steal the spoils brought by the secondary. also, that secondary would likely become a primary, because of the work put into it.

From: origon
Date: 2002-04-18 14:01:19
In-Reply-To: 1436

One possibility is that we allow the user to create one character of each playable race, and the different races would then start on different locations, so that they cannot interfear with eachother easily.
Since we are aiming for a world that is to give exitement even if there are no gods giving quests all the time, i think we should build tensions between races, and religions. So that if an elf enters the orc city, it would be completely legal to kill him.
This sense of belonging could be lost if you allow many chars tho.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-02 21:07:13
In-Reply-To: 1442

I'm not sure about that, whats to prevent an Orc from being born in the Night Elf city? The race shouldn't dictate where you start.

This prolly should be for another thread, but my ideas:

When you start the game you pick the race you want, it will have some background about the race, show you what you'll look like, and then it lets you pick places to start. (or the start location can be random) I see no problem with a race starting anywhere... But there should be RECOMMENDED (or if random a much higher chance of starting) areas that you start that your race is native too. The different starting areas (likely to be just pre established citys) would also have stats and pictures of them and history, you can view there laws, and rules. Say you wanted to be an Orc and was thinking of spawning in the Night Elf city, you view the rules and see "Orcs shot on sight." you can still start there, but it isn't recommended that you do, you're likely not to live very long.

And about haveing multiple characters.. I think only 1 character is allowed per account. BUT when that character dies and isn't playable anymore (you could play as a ghost or zombie or something if you die right. although you should get an option to contiune playing this character if you do die, cause some people might not want to be a ghost.) If you die and can't contiune playing or decide to kill your character or not be a ghost, your charcter is deleted, and you can start another. The dead body although might have some good items, but the creatures that come and take items dropped on the ground by players would likely "rob" your body before you can get another character and build him up to go get his stuff.

This solves the whole haveing multiple characters to do bad things.

And if someone kills you and you think about starting a new character to go kill him, it isnt very likely you could do that very fast, because a starting character dosnt know jack, and dosn't have much in the way of weapons or anything, so hes not really going to be much of a threat to the guy untill a few hours of play, and by then that guy could be LONG gone from the area, and they may never see eachother again.

From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-04-19 00:52:08
In-Reply-To: 1442

Ok, you can make a char of each race, that sounds reasonable. But we need to have a way for you to be able to delete your char and start a new one.

From: origon
Date: 2002-04-19 12:09:45
In-Reply-To: 1445

With allowing a chars of each reace we only prevent the interaction in between the character.
There is still the question if we want to allow only one char because this makes the bond to your person stronger.

From: origon
Date: 2002-04-19 20:22:29
In-Reply-To: 1445

If you want to delete your char, jump a cliff :)

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-04-20 20:10:23
In-Reply-To: 1451

Maybe you want to offer your char to sacrifice.. Hmh, that brings another problem. What if someone makes a char, sacrifices it, makes another etc.

Some god might like it, but others might not. Tell me, is this a problem.

In other words, do we want this?

From: Rahl
Date: 2002-04-24 19:07:08
In-Reply-To: 1452

There are two ways I see we can solve this is by 1. not letting people scrafice people at all or limit them to one character per account and if your char dies by wahtever means not let them create another character for a certain amount of days. We can scrafice realism for keeping the layers from doing stupid things that they will repeat if they can or keep the realism and 9hopefully) make better choicce then constantly killing their characters.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-02 21:14:35
In-Reply-To: 1452

i don't see no point. A player that once dies and cannot play anymore, there character is deleted from the game. I.e. a god wouldn't get an unlimited army because not every dead character would want to become a ghost.

Once you die, and you die in a way that is acceptable by yorkator (i think thats the death zombie god) you will be presented a menu. Do you want to contiune playing as a ______? the blank being Ghost, zombie, etc.. and you will be able to see the stats about what you will become and what its benifits and dissavantages are. Some of the undead creatures are very... boreing and limited, while others are very powerful and could be fun. If they so decide to become the undead, then yorka gets another person in his army and that character isn't deleted. But if he dosn't decide to "give" his soul to yorka uppon his death, then his character and thus soul is deletd from the game. He will then have to create another character.

I highly think one character per account. And accounts should be done via a "serial number" that you get when you sign up your account on the website. You must provide an e-mail address/name/addres.. etc... this would prevent multiple accounts per person, cause each new account you make sure the address/name/e-mail isn't already in the database. Then when they login the game they put in there serial and that allows the game to look up there details via the database. Also you could have alot of stats stored in the database (Basicly the whole character file could be in a mysql database) and then the website can display lists of characters, there levels or ages, or whatever accomplishemnets they have. Lots o possiblitys.. lol

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-04-24 21:30:51
In-Reply-To: 1462

Allright, I think we should allow sacrificing characters, that makes worshipping more interesting. People hunt pagans to be offered to gods.. Enchain them and carry to certain death. No need to playerkill but apprehend and take to gaol.

This day limit may (will) annoy people. You die by an arrow of a orc scout. OK, no game for weekend, I have to wait for two days. YEES!

I say that we should have one character per account but no limit to creating a new character when you die.

Still, no solution to actual problem. Hmh.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-02 21:18:24
In-Reply-To: 1462

one character per account.

you can sacrafice your self to the gods, thus becomming a higher class of undead, if that is what you want.

you can sacrafice other players, they would become even higher class of undead if they wanted or create another player.

Sacraficeing other players isn't easy, and requires much skill and planning. The PNPC AI for a player would fight back if you tried to kidnap and sarafice a player, so you'll have to likely drug the player so they can't fight back then sacrafice them. It should also be ilegal to do that in almost all the citys (The evil citys of course it would be welcomed and expected.) So you couldn't try it anywhere in a city or you might get discovered and executed.

Killing your character wouldn't be wise because of the time and energy invested in him. And if you do die in some far off quest, next time you try to do that you will be EXTRA sure you don't make the same mistake.

From: Rahl
Date: 2002-04-25 00:07:32
In-Reply-To: 1463

I might have an idea lets just go with Archantes idea just let the killing go and no time limit then when the game actually continues lets see how the players recat. Then based on observations then we can decide how to deal with this problem.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-02 21:20:08
In-Reply-To: 1463

whats the real problem? a new character isn't a threat to other players, plus just program it to make sure if you create a new character you can't start the new character anywhere near where your last character died. Problems (whatever they where) solved.

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-04-26 04:06:45
In-Reply-To: 1465

yeah, this is one thing that we won't know the best way until playtesting the game

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-05-22 22:36:58
In-Reply-To: 1475

I think only one char for each player whould be best and that "we" (the project leaders) whould carefully decide who whould enter and who whould not (so there whoudl be like max 100 people in the game) that whould make it funnier couse you could start to know some people and hate some and they whould often be there to meet you... atleast i think its much funnier to play in a society that dosent consist by 60% of junk chars that are only there for cousing trouble... but thats what i think!

how big is the world going to be? is the map on the ftp server correct?

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-03 07:05:55
In-Reply-To: 1476

Once you die, and you die in a way that is acceptable by yorkator (i think thats the death zombie god) you will be presented a menu. Do you want to contiune playing as a ______? the blank being Ghost, zombie, etc..

this, however, should be a _very_ rare occurrance, or would be dictated by yorka himself, if he sees someone he'd especially like to have as an undead

also, accounts should be signed up for in game

stats and whatnot could be viewed from the website, but should be stored in a master on the server and should not read back from the on-line database, so that you can't hack into the website database and change your stats, just view them

this allows us to keep data more secure and prevents hacking (to a point)

for that matter, character data period should be stored on the server, not on the person's computer, thus preventing diablo-esque character editing

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-07-30 16:28:01
In-Reply-To: 1476

The process of becoming an undead and simply dying are two very different things.

First and foremost, the choice of becoming an undead AND continuing your gaming career from there on does not occur after you die, it happens before it. An individual who wishes to go through the process of undeath still has to perform a delicate suicide ritual by which he indicates his willingness. In addition, it is expected for that individual to be a loyal servant of Yorkaturr.

As I wrote in the Worldbook, those that are forcefully made undead by Yorkaturr's servants will turn into "little more than mindless beasts who scavenge and ravage the living for no purpose other than pure malice". What this means in practical terms is that the character is deleted, and an undead AI-controlled monster is created in his place.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-05-05 10:09:08
In-Reply-To: 1478

This brings us to question about starting locations. I know that people like to play in small, or larger, groups. They have some set of players, and friends, that play together. One character dies and a new is made. And you'll have to start from an another continent or land.

That makes the game different from other online RPGs but.. that annoys people.

If we allow player to start wherever they want they are able to join their group again.

OTOH then players can 'loop' their char with sacrifise-create-sacrifise..

So let's make it be that the available starting locations depend on how the character died.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-19 18:13:18
In-Reply-To: 1483

the database for the game likely SHOULD be a mysql or something similar database.

A) its free
B) its VERY secure
C) its VERY customizeable
D) its VERY fast

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-07 01:27:56
In-Reply-To: 1485

for one thing, you wouldn't be able to start in the wilderness where your char was killed in battle
and likely you'd have trouble getting back there in time to gather your stuff

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-19 18:06:34
In-Reply-To: 1488

exactly, and what makes these kind of games fun is the friends that one makes, these friendships shouldn't be forced to just the one character, if he dies it would be very hard to travel to meet up with them again, even if they are communicating outside of the game (and they will) "I’m in blah region, meet me half way in whatever place" Its not going to prevent them from getting back to there friends, and if they travel in packs, then likely if they die there friends will pick up and save there friends best items or everything they can carry and deliver it to there friends new character. If you make it a weeks (real time) travel to meet them half way that would only serve to piss off the players.

I think it wouldn't cause much of a problem to make then have to go back to the start position of there choice. And not have very may, one per race. Not every cotton pickin’ town would be a start location. and some races can even share the same location, (the friendly ones who naturally live in the same region.) only races that need there own start location are ones that do not naturally cohabitate with other races, and thus wouldn't be good to start them off in the middle of the enemy's region.

For players, death is permanent, they loose all knowledge and items possessed by the player (like items they can make skills etc..) and would have to relearn them all, smart players would be able to buy a book and write down there most important skills, and there friends would be able to save that item above all for there dead friend. Books being VERY expensive only the most devoted players would take the time to save for one to write down there skills.

Items like Houses and other such belongings one doesn’t carry around with them would exist, thought the game, the players carried items still exist, and if no one goes to where he died he could pick them up again, but likely the janitor creatures would of found them first and hulled them off to wherever they put them.

When the online player dies the offline one doesn’t so we should make the game as user friendly as possible and not try to piss them off or make things difficult. Aside from roll playing people like to play these games to meet friends and do adventures with them. So we shouldn’t squash that feature else people wouldn't play.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-19 18:17:07
In-Reply-To: 1516

It being a mysql database would allow website access to the stats and data, etc...

And i said via the website a "serial" can be generated that allows only one character. And the critera to get a serial should be one that is hard to keep reproduceing and getting more serials. And the serial is inserted into a database so that one couldn't figure out the algo and make more on there own, cause the serial has to be valid and be inside the database to be allowed to logon.

and hacking into the website is uh... a security issue, a box can be ran so its not possible to hack into it, (Where the database is kept, and a seperate box for web stuff on the same network.

The secure box for the database only accepts databse connections from other boxes on the network, and you have to tunnel into it or login in localy to access the shell.

There are may ways to prevent hacking, and it really shouldn't be an issue in desgning what features to add to the website, since it can be made secure. :P

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-19 22:03:38
In-Reply-To: 1517

I agree that it could be mysql
I agree that it should be viewable from the website

I just want the db that the game uses to be a different one than the one on site (the web-accessable one would be a mirror of sorts)
first, for security, because making the main game db web-accessable is just asking for trouble
second, it would decrease the size of the web db. we could have it mirror only certain needed values (spells, skills, other stats that concern the player) and not need to contain the "behind the scenes" data

just my thoughts

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-20 01:52:58
In-Reply-To: 1518

thats fairly difficult, and just cause your web scripts can access it dosnt mean its accessably by anyone else.

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-23 04:02:52
In-Reply-To: 1542

how big is the world going to be? is the map on the ftp server correct?

you see, that's where the problem with your idea comes in

the world will be huge (can't remember the exact dimensions) and some of it may never get explored fully
we can't limit the game to 100 people, beacuse it would be too sparse, and if 75 people have to work during the day, there'll be very few people to rp with

besides that, if someone gets in and their friend doesn't because WE don't like his character, we've got a boycot and a lot of pissed off people on our hands

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-23 16:59:20
In-Reply-To: 1549

the size of the world, if it ever is created as designed, would be able to support thousands of players and 90% of which you're very likely to NEVER encounter. When it takes a month to walk across the known magic world (Above ground, not counting caves and such) there is ALOT of area for people to be off doing things.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-23 17:14:36
In-Reply-To: 1550

its not to hard to check location of ip addresses, it can be done with a php script automaticly (ripe and arin both have web searches)

From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-05-25 04:56:01
In-Reply-To: 1554

If Majik will be as popular as many of us like to anticipate it will be, trying to speak to each new player before we allow the character to be created would be infeasible at best and impossible at worst. Probably the easiest way to prevent multi account creation would be ip address scanning. Of course some would be able to get around this, but just the warning would deter 80% of possible cheaters.

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-05-23 17:19:51
In-Reply-To: 1556

but... ym ip changes very often for an exampel... does it still see its me?

From: raeky
Date: 2002-05-23 17:22:57
In-Reply-To: 1557

it tells you who owns the ip address, i.e. your internet provider. Thus it tells you the general physical location of the person.

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-24 04:21:31
In-Reply-To: 1558

even still, like I said, we can't limit by ip

more than one person can use an internet connection
we have 4 in my house, for example

From: namhas
Date: 2002-05-28 09:52:49
In-Reply-To: 1572

I would prefer the e-mail address way. It requires something to create a new account and to answer the confirmation e-mail. Some people may do it, that's cheating and we can't do anything about that. The good
thing in the e-mail address way is that I can't see no
drawbacks in it, unlike in the ip address way (NAT, dynamic ip.)

If we would like a system that would not allow cheating, then we would perhaps invite only trusted people that will not cheat and then give them power to invite others, trusting that they don't invite people that would cheat. Hmm.

However, either case, restricting player registration by ip address, e-mail address or invitation mechanism it will mean that the game will have less players (even though those players then will play more devoutly), and
thus, we might want to ponder how could our world work with limited amount of selected players or do we need to get just as much players as possible to make the world (economy, etc.) to work?

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-26 00:56:24
In-Reply-To: 1576

I'll say it again

NO IP SCANS!!!! NOT FAIR IF MULTIPLE GAMERS ARE IN A HOUSE!!!!

From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-05-27 01:26:35
In-Reply-To: 1580

Hmm, i see your point, but is there a better solution? Clearly a sage/god interviewing every account applicant is infeasible, and many people have more than one email address. Maybe someone can come up with something better...

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-05-27 10:46:00
In-Reply-To: 1586

As in many problems, there is no fully waterproof solution to this either.

Some people need multiple accounts for they play from same machine, some want to give their friends an oppoturnity to try the game with a new char..

But this is not the problem. It's the question about cheating and other irritating behavior. This can be prevented by creating a game world where is no use to multiple characters. (What this means in practise is far more complicated.) Some ideas have occurred here already.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-07-26 01:37:11
In-Reply-To: 1586

we have a "sign up form" on the website, where you submit your vital information, name, phone number, address, e-mail addres, etc... and then enter that into a database, use an algo to generate a serial number, enter that serial into the database, send an e-mail to the user with the serial. They download and install the game. They login and create ONE user. the game simply won't allow more then one user per install. There won't be an option to pick the user you want to use like Diablo II. you just login with your login/password and blam your playing your ONE character.

If your character dies, you would be presented two options, start a new character or contiune playing as Undead. While undead you should have a menu option to "release the spirt" of the undead character and start a new living character (since playing as undead likely won't be nearly as good as being alive.)

The serial is entered not when you install the game, but when you create your login/password on the server. This way multiple users in the same house can use the same computer by gettting multiple serials issued to them useing the same address/phone. E-mails and names have to be always unique. (although two people at two different address with two differnt e-mails can have the same identical e-mail, but never the same name with same e-mail. and never the same e-mail with same address...).

This won't prevent loosers from getting many serials with different fake names, but we can simply do a database query for all the duplicate addresses, that are greater then say 2. And we see some guy with 10 serials with quite fake names, we would simply just delete his database reccords. No database reccord = no account = no character. His online chararacter would just die on the spot for cheating.

Secondly multiple serials in the same household wouldn't be allowed to start in the same start zones... that way they are geographicaly far apart.

Then there would be the people who enter fake addresses and fake names... There would be no EASY way to prevent that.

So I assume the bottom line would be, it would be almost impossible to prevent multiple accounts.

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-05-28 16:58:42
In-Reply-To: 1593

i think it whould be best if we selected some... like we interview them and people that are very trustworthy in the game could get ability to get new people in...

it is not very fun when there is all to many players like in tibia there is like 500.000 chars or something... about 100.000 of them are junk chars... atlest i could provide some very trustworthy players that whould never cheat on me... (in this case, the game)

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-05-29 02:06:30
In-Reply-To: 1597

again, our world is too big for that
if we accepted 1000 people by hand, it would take forever and would still not be close to enough to fill the world

invitation-treeish method (invite 5 friends, they invite 5 friends) also wouldn't prevent this, as many people would invite friends just to be able to play with their friends (which I see no problem with, personally) and not care how well they rp when they invite them

I say do email, and if you want to make it harder to sign up with multi-emails, just have a quistionaire to fill out in order to sign up (customer info, target audience for any ads, etc.)

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-06-01 02:40:10
In-Reply-To: 1598

Will it be posible to use split-screen/multi-client? so that you can play with many majik screens at same time. couse then its easy to find a hidden place and start training and thats probably not what we want...

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-06-02 00:04:10
In-Reply-To: 1608

umm............if we're trying to limit to 1 char/person, why would we even bother coding something like that in?

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-06-02 15:51:06
In-Reply-To: 1611

becous we wont be able to fix it to only 1 char per player =D

From: raeky
Date: 2002-07-26 01:38:44
In-Reply-To: 1733

eh.. pretty much that was just a brain storm .. :)

summary is, its impossible to prevent multi accounts per user. So we just make the game world very difficult to benifit from multi accounts like Arch said.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-03 05:31:42
In-Reply-To: 1733

For the first time players, the character creation process should take very long and should include separate steps. Eg story/novel to read so one has a faint idea about the world one is entering, some questions about that text and by answering right one would be able to take the next step. could be done in relation to the game character one is thinking to play. System could work in a similiar manner as those single person RPnovels where you choose from different paths to go. So all in all it would be a story that provides you pieces of your code that is needed to actually start the game. Player character should also have eg a background that the player has to write according given rules.... on and on and on ;)

One way to make the life of a multiplayer bit harder, is to send periodic activity conformation email to the address, only by replying to this mail, one would be able to continue playing. these methods could be automated and wouldn't be overly tiresome (maybe they would include a question about the present status etc of the character...) for a single account player, but would discourage multiplaying... and of course wouldn't completely solve the problem.

So, this is why we could introduce in-game inquisition, a council consisting sages and some trusted players who would go and harrass suspected multiplayers.

when a game character dies he/she would be allowed to take a fast track character creation process.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-07-31 09:05:51
In-Reply-To: 1760

ahh.. that clears things up. :)

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-07 00:34:45
In-Reply-To: 1771

I think gods and possibly sages while in the game should have options to view a players details, by a mouseover or right click of the player, brings up a "Details" link aside from regular links that a normal player would get.

You can view there IP address, account name, a list of other accounts that the same IP address has accessed, so spotting these mutiplayer people would be alot eaiser.

I like the idea of a little history one has to go through to start a player. Possibly we write up several texts for the races, or clans of the races. When someone selects Orc for example to be there race, we several different clans and regions orcs populate. Each region would have a bit different history. The player is presented these documents to read. They would always be accessable through a menu option, and that way they can read it and have a familarity with what race and clan/region they belong too, to properly role play that character.

Each city should also contain librarys that contain more detailed information about past events, and other world events and other races. But each city would have a bit different view of another race, so there documents would have to be tailerd for that race/region/city the document is from. of course nothing prevents a player from takeing a book and going to the other side of the world and putting it in another library. :P

From: Tumababa
Date: 2002-12-22 04:01:49
In-Reply-To: 1780

Hmmmmm... If you include 'required reading', how many players will scan the text quickly and not bother to digest it? Maybe a movie clip?