Shattered Kingdoms

If Dulrik can implement that, it would represent a major time-saving improvement. However, there's a lot of room for abuse in a 48 hour window. For instance, if someone brewed up some healing potions, dropped them, then went to collect them and use them on an alt in a PvP situation within that 48 hour window, that would clearly be "using two characters to gain an advantage over someone who only has one," something expressly forbidden according to the text of 'help multiplay.' Even if a player didn't do something as overt as that, but just used an item in PvE to benefit his or her party then ditched it, or used an enchanted weapon to level up, this could still be construed as a rules abuse. It also doesn't mean people can have 48 hour storage characters or use multiple characters as passthroughs to get items to allies, or anything like that. To that end, "correcting the issue" should probably mean junking the item, not passing it along.

In other words, this would not represent carte blanche for 48 hour item transfers, and the Rules Manager may still have to exercise judgment in some cases, even when the 48 hour window to discard has been met by the player. I realize you're in no way asking for that with your suggestion either; I'm just making it clear so some people don't get the wrong idea behind the intent of something like this. It would have the potential to eliminate some false positives, and that's the main value. As a former Rules Manager, I'm all for things that can eliminate false positives.

It still leaves the situation exactly the same for people who don't register an email. I'm not personally fond of requiring people to register an email to potentially avoid an undeserved punishment, but it's probably still a net positive overall, and there are already other incentives to register an email anyway.

Is there some sort of way to flag an item with a symbol next to it to let that specific player know that one of his previous characters had touched an item?

As far a the 'one-chracter only' rule, I feel it is appropriate for 2nd offenses. A punishment like this for a 1st time offense may be too harsh imo. In the event that the player is truly innocent, it may cause them to quit the game.

Could save a lot of time and hassle by just limiting everyone to one char.

This has been asked in the past, but I don't see a practical forward path to implementation. The database crunching takes too long to work in real time. The alert idea is therefore a conceivable compromise. Although as Thuban mentioned, it doesn't reduce judgement calls by 100%.

There are two key questions to be answered. Judgement, you need to prove guilty. Then punishment hopefully fitting the crime. At the moment players never see the judgement side they only see the punishment. This is an issue. The solution is hard to see with out public discussing each case which is unlikely to happen. However at the moment players see mandatory sentences with no trial.
Firstly I would like to see mutliplaying and item/information trading to be split up from the one heading. Running two characters at the same time vs trading a full set of loot should not have the same punishment. They are not the same crime not even close. Most skilled players could complete all PvE content while mutiplaying where item transfer is unlikely to achieve anything near that.

An idea for application of punishment that seems a lot more fair regarding item trading would take some coding. If a player could be flagged to not be able to carry an item. Said item could be removed from the player for a time. For example curved mithril dagger transferred from X to Y. X and Y will not be able to hold a mithril dagger as per (H) flag or even that it rots in their hands for a RL time. This would solve the problem for rarer items putting them back into circulation. This would punish the action and the result of it more directly. Second and third instances of the same player can suffer larger penalties. This kind of punishment is weaker for a casual player who doesnt know what they are doing and harsher for a high end player trading high end loot. In my mind it is more fitting of the bigger the crime the harsher the punishment. It does have the catch of punishing mercenaries who specializes harder than other class but given its time limited nature the punishment can be changed to be harsher and weaker depending on the nature of said crime.

I can not help but feel that Imms(and vets) because of their knowledge forget how much investment they are removing from people when they force a deletion or even a full loot of a character. Perhaps some tests could be thrown out via RP events (with player consent) that reward loyalty points to help test some of the punishments on a range of players. I am sure imms see the difference between players refusing a Xp drains of raise dead/death quest, and players trying to avoid jail code looting vs jail time.

SK allows players to play alts and not disclose to everyone who their alts are. Having public discussion of potentially trivial item transfer cases would expose who plays which alts, and that certainly carries its own set of negatives. You would risk tossing players who prefer to keep their list of alts private under the bus for the sake of publicizing the entire enforcement process from start to finish. The only way around that would be to anonymize the names of the alts and the items in question, but then we're not talking about a public discussion anymore. Edoras's suggestions for more detailed afterlife posts may represent a suitable compromise that doesn't risk players' privacy.



They technically don't have the same punishment, even though they both come under the heading of multiplay. Help multiplay describes the punishment for both cases.


I'm guessing that is not as feasible as Mogor's proposed solution. Only Dulrik knows for sure but, from what he has said, this would probably carry the same difficulties as previously proposed solutions that would require that items interact with characters based on those items' history.



A lot of this comes down to personal responsibility of players, though. One argument in defense of players junk-looting each other has always been that, if you take an action with a character that gets you into a conflict with another character, you can expect consequences. You can generally avoid consequences if you are non-confrontational; many prominent characters have gone their whole IC lives without being in one PvP situation. The same logic applies to the rules. You are personally responsible for every command you enter. If you take an action with a character that violates the rules, you can expect consequences. In the case of multiplay, the first line of the multiplay helpfile is "Playing multiple characters is a very fine line to walk." Given the extremely low number of item transfer punishments over the years, it stands to reason that players understand how to walk that line. The vast majority of players have no trouble being personally responsible for playing fair and have never received any warnings or punishments for item transfer or anything else.

The main issue in both of the above scenarios with regard to how they can be improved is false positives. In the case of PvP, there have been plenty of cases where the wrong person got targeted, killed, and full-looted, and even some cases where people were engaging in PvP and looting with no legitimate RP to support it. In the former case, there are usually further IC consequences and RP that develop from such an event. In the latter case, the offending characters have been punished when caught. In the case of enforcement false positives, those are something that we try our best to avoid, generally erring on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt and leniency (which, again, isn't something entirely visible to all the players). If a proposal in this thread has the potential to further reduce the chance of a false positive and can actually be implemented, that's a great outcome.

Thuban, that was a very well thought out response to my post. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I confess that I had no business putting "a lot" in my post. I believe it would be accurate to say that there have been multiple cases, relatively recently, though.

I am almost certainly suffering from the cognitive bias you mentioned. I don't have any way of knowing when items are indirectly transferred between characters and nobody gets punished. I will point out that not every curse that gets handed out also gets posted on the boards - at least they didn't use to. Maybe all multiplay punishments do and always have; I'm not sure.

I'm still not comfortable with how multiplaying is established, though. My own case, which did not bother me at the time because it was just a few ticks of xp, illustrates that in at least some cases, the evidence being used by IMMs is far from bullet-proof (yes I realize I'm talking about a case from five years ago and the IMMstaff has changed and so have policies around punishments). However, it makes me inclined to believe players who say "Apparently I picked up some low level gear and dropped it on one character. Later one of my characters found it and sold it, and I was punished." It's not clear to me what rules were broken or what the evidence of wrongdoing is beyond one item being touched by two characters. There needs to be evidence of one character behaving in a way that they would not have normally, in my opinion.

I agree with the rest of your post, but this part rubs me the wrong way.While this is definitely multiplaying, I don't think this is a good metric to say that "all" multiplaying punishments have to meet. For one, it's impossible even with obsessive stalking to know what "normal" behavior is for a character.

Secondly, I think it's much more fitting for multiplaying to be fundamentally defined as "using one character to benefit another." If I had one character that always checked the bins of inn rooms, that is perfectly normal. If I had another character who habitually dropped extra unneeded armor and extra enchanted items into bins of inn rooms for newbies, that would also be perfectly normal, if not greatly encouraged to help newbies. However, if even just once I happen to pick up from a bin one of items my other characters has enchanted, then I'm guilty of multiplaying even though the behavior patterns of both characters wasn't altered.

If you are the sort of player that leaves around armor and weapons on the ground for others to use, that's fine, but it certainly does raise the bar for your own play in that you are then forced to ensure that you don't pick up those same items for use on other characters. Similarly, if I play a lightie sorc and a lightie rogue, I need to take extra caution to ensure that etherealform scrolls which I scribe for others don't end up getting passed to me from those same allies.

I'm inclined to disagree with you, Edoras.

If I had one character who always dropped things in bins, and another character who always checked bins, I would not consider it cheating for my second character to take something out of a bin that my first character dropped, as long as my log in times and my character's path and actions were not influenced by information I gained on a different character. I wouldn't do it, however, because it would look improper and it's not worth getting deleted over.

If I deliberately created two characters who would wind up benefiting each other all the time, that might be cheating. If I immediately ran to the inn because I knew there was something there, that would certainly be cheating. If my GM winds up with stuff he doesn't want and unloads it into the bin because that's what he always does, and a day later I'm playing a lowbie who winds up in the inn and finds a neat item in the bin, that's not cheating, in my book, because while one character benefited the other, there was no intent to do so when I put the items in the bin, and there was no change in my second character's actions, either. Again, I would avoid doing this, but not because I think it is cheating; I would avoid it because it would be very difficult to prove that I was not cheating.

I don't know if the post is still up from the curse I was talking about, but it mentioned "the player admitted to using poor judgment," and that's exactly what I meant when I admitted poor judgment - if you have two characters who need a cloak, you're best off only trying to get a good cloak on one of your characters, then waiting a few days, and equipping the second, to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

No problem. Now just roll up a dude, run through the Endgame Trifecta of Somnium, GGI, and Ephialtis, and give me some feedback on the rewards that are set up for that.



Just going by the intent and letter of the rules (keep in mind, these were in place since before I was even Rules Manager, so this is just my interpretation), we see the text in "help multiplay" that the main concept of the rules is "to ensure the game remains fun, fair, and enjoyable," and that "using two characters to gain an advantage over someone who only has one is unfair and thus expressly forbidden." We also see that "it's not fair or fun for the people being 'teamed up' on (directly or indirectly) if you use two characters for a similar purpose or interchangeably in a competitive fashion."

I think if you apply those statements to the judgments rendered about multiplay that are in the Rules Manager afterlife thread, you can understand the logic behind the punishments. For instance, in the hypothetical case you give, a character who picks up gear that his other character left behind and sells it is getting an advantage on the character that makes the sale (extra gold) that would be unattainable for anyone playing one character. If you only have one character, you have no opportunity to use one to seed the other's bank account. There is also the issue that some classes are better at locating and acquiring loot, but others have haggle and can fetch a better price for it. This may seem trivial, but it is a material advantage, and a little infusion of coin from a GM character that has a full bank account to a newly minted character that is dead broke isn't nothing. It's also the case the alt doesn't have to be a newly minted character, but, instead, just someone who needs to buy a lot of vials for potion brewing. Now you've entered the territory of using characters for a similar purpose or interchangeably in a competitive fashion. You could make the case these examples don't warrant the same punishment as acquiring and enchanting an entire suit of elite gear for your alt, but then you are staring over the precipice of human judgment needing to be applied to each case and a range of punishments applied based on subjective interpretations of severity. Is it worth it to go down that road?

Keep in mind, too, these are rules for players and are bound by OOC considerations and standards. These trump any IC justification you may be able to supply, which is something you've been pointing to in this thread. Yes, maybe it would be appropriate IC behavior for your characters to assist each other in direct or indirect ways. Maybe it makes total sense for one to leave loot around and the other to grab it. It might also be totally appropriate IC behavior for a given character you create to be a lecherous, unrelenting sexual harasser. Neither of these things is allowed for OOC reasons, not IC reasons.