Shattered Kingdoms

This is what's known as over-reach. A few people tentatively approve of a loose concept and suddenly it's a mandate for radical change.

I never claimed that I was for the level 40 cap and have no plans to implement such. It's possible I could be swayed, but I'm definitely leaning toward doing nothing more than what I said in my last post: a way for players to designate to admins which character they intend to be their main. Regardless of whether I implement such a system, you are already limited to one character in a cabal per player, so no changes would be involved there.

Everyone has pretty much stated why I have an alt in the first place. As leader of a trib every time I log on it's something or another that needs be done. It IS like a job sometimes. Sometimes ya just wanna play around and do something different. When things become stale or old it's nice to have something else, and if something happens where the alt seems more the direction you are feeling, it's nice to be able to switch over. How easy if implemented would it be to switch your main?

One of the situations listed earlier is really very simple: if you have two leadership characters, then one of them is never around when the other is. You create a gap any time you fill another one. Your presence in the game is a net zero gain for other people's experiences on the whole. From that perspective, you become a parasite.

That presupposes that you won't or can't spend time being there as both. I personally am a housewife with a good six hours a day free. That's 21 hours a week each that could be devoted to 2 different characters, which is significantly more than many people play even a main. I know I'm not the only person who has time like that, and with the post of 'if you're filling 2 leadership roles, that's upward of 15 hours a week', well... yeah, if you have more than 130% that amount of time for a leadership role with 2 different pcs... that would suggest that maybe you are seeing things in too much of an either/or way. Because devoting more time than needed each to not just one, but two, roles, that have nothing to do with each other, doesn't make a person a parasite. And if you disagree, please tell me, in detail, how it makes them a parasite to go above and beyond what is needed not just in one case, but in two.

That does manage to bring us back to OP.



You cannot spend time being both. You, in fact, would take time that would be spent playing a character and must spend it managing more than one. You wind up with a bunch of finger puppets. Coordinating then becomes possible mostly by playing the out-of-game game.

Leaders aren't "needed." We have immortals to induct people if it comes to that. Leaders can be naturally found, tested, and discarded if need be. You aren't "going the extra mile" if you snatch up a leadership slot on a character who is only going to log in once you've been pestered about a seeker or the who list becomes favorable or you happen to not want to play one of your other characters.

If you cannot get behind putting 100% of your SK time into a character, that character shouldn't damage the game by slowing it down in an absentee leadership position.

I'm talking about someone who, like me, has 6-8 hours a day. I'm not talking about logging into both pcs at the same time, or any of the things under help multiplay. I'm talking about playing 3-4 hours a day with 1 pc and 3-4 hours a day with another pc. Not at the same time. And if being on for 4 hours a day (1/6th of the day) is absentee, what qualifies you as present?

And any stipulation for someone who logs in, sees people they can RP with - far more effectively on their other character. If all the do is log, who, quit and relog, should someone still wait the required amount of time

I don't personally think they should. They didn't use any skills. They didn't move, or contact anyone, and weren't necessarily even seen.

I wonder if it would be possible to allow the cooldown period to scale with the amount of time spent playing before logging out, up to x amount. Like, you log in 5 minutes, go do a few things, and see someone on the who list, log out, have to wait 5 minutes, on in the same vein, to like maybe an hour or so where the time period between chars would cap and plateau?

There's no way the game or code could differentiate between someone logging in, hitting who, and seeing people they'd rather RP with vs people doing the same thing and seeing people they'd like to PK on their other character. Nor should it make the attempt.

The cool down period should be long enough that the who list has a reasonable chance to change between log ins.

In theory the game could log PK events and save the time logged in of all participants upon such events starting. Then you just perform basic math to flag outliers for investigation. High profile events like resurrection could be that way, too. If you think of it in terms of event-based recording of online times, it's not hard to come up with a myriad of approaches by which the game could differentiate between potential player behaviors and choices based on the data created in exercising them.

I'd sooner suggest just making the who list only report people in the same area as you. It solves a lot of problems with one conditional statement and no timers.