We also do not know whether the limitation will be characters per server or characters in total for all servers combined. Each of these has different advantages and disadvantages for the player.
Likewise we do not know if additional character slots will be for sale. Many of us foam at the mouth at the thought of microtransactions but this type of purchase - from a website not an in-game store - is fairly traditional and I for one expect it to be available. Which implies a fairly small number of character slots to begin with, alas.
I'm hoping it's at least 2 or 3. If there's nothing to do on my main or I just want to do something different for a while I'd like to be able to level a different class, go craft things, harvest materials, level with a friend who just joined the game, or any number of other things it would suck to be restricted to just my main character.
Regarding no-boxing..
If Amazon and similar vendors can geographically limit credit cards by country (they and others can and have for years) then so can Visionary Realms.
It simply remains to be seen if they have the will to do it. If they do, then they can geographically limit players, and by extension, boxing. It's a solved problem, but no-one wants to do it, even as an optional server set, because it limits the target demographic to a subset.
If you're curious about it, it's an extension of the Address Verification System that currently exists. GeoIP location that must match the AVS of the subscriber CC, and you're done, for an optional server ruleset. Of course, implicit in such a system is that the billing name must match the credit card name, and those could never change after account creation. Similarly, changes to the billing address would have to be temporally limited to within reasonable values.
Temporary annual or quarterly exceptions could also be granted via expiring client certificates, for players who went on vacation for such servers. It would be of no value for a player to give away or share such a certificate, as multi-source concurrency would instantly expire it, server side. Again, trivial to implement and entirely optional, for those who wish to have a truly no-box server experience, in any game.
Another option would be to permit tying a Yubikey to an account, and again requiring the credit card name and billing name to never change, along with AVS & GeoIP. Yubikeys are cheap, and using a yubikey OTP for login has certain advantages.
Pivotshare, for example, in their Terms of Use: " Geographic Limitations. Use of and participation in any of Pivotshare's earnings and/or rewards programs is limited to residents of the United States. Pivotshare reserves the right to geographically limit or restrict your access to these services based upon your location and/or citizenship. " Which of course requires they can enforce such a thing, which they can and do.
Nope. Same address, no issue, provided the rest of it lines up similarly.
EDIT: Just wanted to emphasize. This isn't what I'm suggesting. This is what google is already doing, along with many other companies. What do I mean?When you're in Canada, and you go to google, you don't go to google.com. You go to google.ca. Similarly, when you're in mexico, you go to google.mx. If you try to go to google.com, you get instantly & transparently redirected to google.mx.
Adding in the existing AVS is already being done. I've worked with several clients who only serve a limited geographical area. They limit everything to be from that area. The ASNs on the edge routers. On the WAF. On the credit cards. On the source addresses everywhere. It's transparent, instant, and their customers don't even notice. They also have exactly zero problems with off-continent malicious traffic, because it can't even ingress into their network, never mind their site.
My point is, this isn't new. It's not mysterious. It's being done, today, already. It's simply whether or not VR wants to avail themselves of utilizing the existing solutions.
One char per sub, I say, and make that sub more expensive.
Can have seperate accounts on one ISP, but each char is charged a sub and the details have to jibe, if family then all will be in the same house and same address different names same last name. if one has a different address, stands to reason there would be a different ISP and do not alert ICE (24 people living in a 1br apartment and its not San Fran? Lets get blockchain to inform the fire department on this clear violation)
Perceived value (just look at starbucks); vs real value: you dont pay the same for a BMW as you do a Honda civic.
I don't mind boxxing, as opposed to Botting. if one can box more power to them- its a bit alienating because the one char is never without the others. But Pantheon will be designed so boxing is not possible.
I understand people wanting alts, its just that when I am progressing at a pace and am used to your one char being on at the same times. I find I cannot progress because you are on an alt- and therefore, by extension I am delayed because I had a good groove with your - I thought- "one" char. What Am I supposed to do while you are leveling your alt?- yes, I will go and find other friends and from then on, you may seek me out, but I will not seek you out.
I also lik ethe idea of evils not being able ot group with goods, but also if evils will group with goods, I am ok with an exp penalty. As the purpose, not the gain will be the driving factor for the group. Deperation or need and not benefit is the motivator. I really need help with this quest, you evils are the only folks around (RP ensues) you need somehting in there too?! let us- you and I, evil and good- join to achieve our goals that are common only in the dungeon but the items are seperate to us both.
Not even remotely a good idea - far too many of us enjoy playing multiple characters on the same server.
While I understand that this may be too direct and simple to get much agreement - I would much prefer a firm no-boxing policy. Enforced by suspensions and if needed bans. If boxing is that much of a problem that we need something done. Which VR doesn't think is the case.
That hadn't worked in other MMOs, you say. It is too hard to enforce.
Friends, you are confusing botting and boxing. Few if any MMOs ban *boxing* which is one player running several characters at the same time. They ban *botting* which is the use of programs or devices to run a character. It is very hard to prove that someone is *botting* rather than manually operating the characters. It is fairly obvious when someone is *boxing*.
First, I'd rather have a reasonable hard cap of total char slots available on one server, rather than have a low-single-digits cap on any given server but be free to have that many on multiple servers. The focus of Pantheon as a social game argues against having to go to a different server and make different friends in order to enjoy all the many classes that VR is offereing us. I think it would also hurt player retention, in the long run.
I certainly expect at least 4 char slots at a minimum on a server. There are 4 'Roles' in the game and at the very least I want to play one char of each role. Honestly I think I would be pretty disappointed with only 4 slots. I can't imagine NOT getting frustrated by having only a very few classes to play, not yet being anwhere near level cap on any of them, but having to delete one in order to play one of the many other fascinating classes that VR has created for us to play.
Later in the game when guilds have larger percentages of characters who are more or less at level cap, I'd like to have a variety of classes to pick from -- again one from each role at a minimum -- so I can join any guild event or raid no matter what Role is needed.
I much prefer that we have more like 9 slots (the number of races) and would be overjoyed to get as many slots as there are classes, which is 12 presently but seems very likely to hit 14 by soon after release.
All this being said, I'm not too disturbed by the possibility of having to buy extra slots (as a one-time purchase, not an increased monthly rate as another sub would entail). Yes, I resist the idea of creeping monetization through micro-transactions. Yes, going overboard in that area will be a real danger to retaining the players who most support the game's philosophy as presently presented.
But the number of characters a player wants can really vary enormously from one player who is devoted to his main and no other, all the way to an alt-a-holic like me. I'm not sure there's any better compromise to be made on this issue.
@Tanix
I had proposed a similar idea a few years back, specifically for a roleplay ruleset - 1 character per server. Makes reputation and choices much more meaningful.
Also, as an aside, If the progeny system were implemented, I’d use it as a way to unlock additional slots versus giving any meaningful bonuses - a sprawling epic quest throughout the leveling process + a time restriction. One unlock every 2 real life years? Just throwing out a number as to not water down the original idea of the server - maybe up to a max of 3 characters? And that progeny would need to maintain some identifier that wouldn’t allow you to “hide” your reputation.
I do think Dorotea is right though - on a standard server though you would lose potential subscribers from being too restrictive.
*Edit
Here were some of the keypoints from original ruleset from the EQ FV server as reference:
1 character slot per account before extra slots through progeny has a profound effect on the crafting economy. It ups the need for a specific player crafter to interact with other player crafters in order to complete items that require crafting ingredient from multiple crafts. It also limits the number of characters that have mastered a crafting profession per profession as each one represents a single account and there for making each master in higher demand. SWG has a similar system and it was very interesting.
vjek said:Nope. Same address, no issue, provided the rest of it lines up similarly.
EDIT: Just wanted to emphasize. This isn't what I'm suggesting. This is what google is already doing, along with many other companies. What do I mean?When you're in Canada, and you go to google, you don't go to google.com. You go to google.ca. Similarly, when you're in mexico, you go to google.mx. If you try to go to google.com, you get instantly & transparently redirected to google.mx.
Adding in the existing AVS is already being done. I've worked with several clients who only serve a limited geographical area. They limit everything to be from that area. The ASNs on the edge routers. On the WAF. On the credit cards. On the source addresses everywhere. It's transparent, instant, and their customers don't even notice. They also have exactly zero problems with off-continent malicious traffic, because it can't even ingress into their network, never mind their site.
My point is, this isn't new. It's not mysterious. It's being done, today, already. It's simply whether or not VR wants to avail themselves of utilizing the existing solutions.
Except if you use TOR
Raidan - despite being a *very* dedicated altoholic I don't disagree. On a specialized ruleset server I can definitely see just having a single character as being an enhancement to whatever objective the specialized ruleset is aimed at.
In fact if it is a temporary server, for three months let us say, as suggested in a different recent thread, I can even see the benefit of not allowing a character to be replaced. You only get to create one character for the life of the server if that enhances the server objectives.
With the number of alternate rule set servers being suggested, there's going to have to be hundreds of servers. Which in turn will fracture the community even more. And that's not good when this is all about building communities within Pantheon.
The only alternate rules server needed is a PvP one an not much else is needed.
What we need much more of is player compromise - while not everything is exactly how you want it, nor 'perfect' in any opinion, I think we need to understand that in order to build the strongest communities players need to compromise some.
Accepting that everyone will have a certain number of character slots is one of those things to compromise on. Fracturing the community over something so trivial is ludicrous.
I'm fine with whatever we get.
Ghool said:With the number of alternate rule set servers being suggested, there's going to have to be hundreds of servers. Which in turn will fracture the community even more. And that's not good when this is all about building communities within Pantheon.
The only alternate rules server needed is a PvP one an not much else is needed.
What we need much more of is player compromise - while not everything is exactly how you want it, nor 'perfect' in any opinion, I think we need to understand that in order to build the strongest communities players need to compromise some.
Accepting that everyone will have a certain number of character slots is one of those things to compromise on. Fracturing the community over something so trivial is ludicrous.
I'm fine with whatever we get.
I'm expecting 3 servers types at launch, 4 max.
PvE
PvP
PvE-RP
PvP-RP
I feel 6 per server is appropriate with the ability to purchase more slots up to a maximum so that you could have one of each class on a server.
((The only alternate rules server needed is a PvP one an not much else is needed.))
Be careful what you ask for - you may get it.
If there are only one or two alternate ruleset servers *none* of them may have pvp. I don't think pvp is a very high priority for VR - or for most of the community for that matter.
I suspect if we all had to vote for 5 rulesets pvp would get a good percentage - but if we all had to vote for three it would get a rather small percentage.
dorotea said:((The only alternate rules server needed is a PvP one an not much else is needed.))
Be careful what you ask for - you may get it.
If there are only one or two alternate ruleset servers *none* of them may have pvp. I don't think pvp is a very high priority for VR - or for most of the community for that matter.
I suspect if we all had to vote for 5 rulesets pvp would get a good percentage - but if we all had to vote for three it would get a rather small percentage.
Pretty sure they said recently there will be a PvP server. I'd assume there will be a RP server, if not the community will pick one as the unofficial RP server... so they may as well just label it RP.