How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts
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@Ganymede Agreed, it is a bigger problem. But that doesn't stop it from happening. Nobody wants to run 'staff plots' anymore because they can get more benefit by running a series of smaller one-shots and mini-plots from their character bit.
@Glitch @Thenomain @EmmahSue Since we HAVE very much sidetracked the purpose of this thread into a wholly different conversation, would it be possible to have the sidetracked posts pulled into a new thread so we can continue without bothering the Fallen World MUX folks?
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@Arkandel said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
The truth is this is a pick-your-own-poison proposition. Either you hire more staff so they can run plot, but then you get an inflated staff roster with all which that entails, or you try to keep it trimmed to work with a tightly-knit team and end up burning out to a crisp or relying on player STs to do these things.
I struggled with how to put everything I wanted to say, and kept falling short. So I'll leave it at the fact that I believe you can generate more RP with less ST effort if you move away from +events and big scenes as your primary mode of driving plot, and so I'm not sure that this really is an accurate choice.
*edited to correct a spelling mistake.
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Fuck, ya'll are just way too complicated for me.
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Props for the thread title.
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@Arkandel said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
I don't care about alt policies either way personally since I never could pull off having more than one active alt at any given time. But I never found restrictive policies to serve the purpose they were supposed to on paper.
I think it depends on what purpose they were supposed to serve on paper.
I favor a one-alt policy simply because it mitigates the impact caused by a player leaving. That seems to be a pretty concrete purpose that is pretty well served by only allowing one alt instead of, say, four.
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Have you on your games then you've allowed alts ever had problems with alts affecting one another more directly than you were comfortable with?
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
Have you on your games then you've allowed alts ever had problems with alts affecting one another more directly than you were comfortable with?
Don't recall one. Which is not to say it never ever happened even once in 20 years, just that it wasn't a big enough deal to be memorable, or to affect a policy decision.
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This happens quite, quite often on WoD games, and I was wondering your secret.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
This happens quite, quite often on WoD games, and I was wondering your secret.
I've never played WoD games so it's hard to contrast. But from what I've gathered, there's a lot more politicking and subtle or even overt PvP than tend to occur in my genres.
I mean... so you want to play a Lieutenant AND a Private in the BSG marine company? Is there really a huge potential for abuse there? Even if your Lieutenant tried to pull some shenanigans by letting your Private get away with something he shouldn't have, there are always other officers further up the chain of command to review the AAR and say "Hey wait a minute..." And honestly I get way more problems with that sort of thing from people who aren't alts but are just OOC friends.
So just generally, I give people the benefit of the doubt and deal with problems when they arise. Really hasn't been a problem for me.
What HAS been a problem with alts for me? Say you get a problem player. OK, he's got one alt. Irritating but not the end of the world. You let him have four alts? OMG such a headache.
Also when people leave the game. I'm just going to pull a number out of my butt and say that the average character has 4 really deep meaningful relationships with other characters. If that player leaves the game and has 2 chars, that's 8 people affected. The more alts you allow, the wider the ripple effect is. MU players are notoriously fickle with games, so this is a big problem for me.
I've also personally observed that alts get 'shelved' when you allow a bunch, just because most people don't have the time to play that many. While that's great for the AltPlayer, it's not so great for the people with those meaningful relationships with them. So in part the limit is trying to manage the monkeysphere effect of people getting left high and dry when their boss/friend/SO/nemesis is never around to interact with.
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@faraday said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
I favor a one-alt policy simply because it mitigates the impact caused by a player leaving.
I favour a one-alt policy because I think it's better for a game if players focus on a single character in the world provided.
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I favor allowing a reasonable number of alts.
Not everyone plays the same way, and goddamn, it'd be nice if people respected that more than I'm seeing in this thread.
A lot of what I'm seeing as reasons for 'oh no, only one, or the world ends' are another example of taking the uncool actions of a few and generalizing about everyone else as though playing more than one character on a game is going to guarantee they're going to lack focus, lack investment, try to take over every sphere on the game with a clique, and suck up more staff time than someone with one.
20 years of experience has taught me every one of these assumptions is faulty, and are inappropriate to sling at people who just like to play differently than you do.
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I like alt limits. Allowing more than two alts I think has more negative impacts on a game than positive ones. Its not as if you can't still have a bunch of other characters on different games, too, but I think @Pyrephox is onto something when it comes to roles.
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It's pretty easy to restrict roles without being draconian about players having alts (or insisting they have all of these other crappy traits in the process for flimsy justification of it).
Most games that allow alts already have restrictions regarding what those alts can be, such as 'no two in the same faction/family/sphere/character class/etc.' and 'no more than one character of rank X/status X/in a political office/in charge of a faction/etc.' (whatever system the game uses) is not exactly a stretch to add to this list. Some games already do have a 'no more than one fachead/family head/gov position/etc.' and this problem is rapidly resolved.
Oh fucking well.
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We did that because of the situation Faraday mentions: Players in control of too much. Hell, we're still trying to resolve staff doing it. Sure, part of why we restrict power is because we're afraid of players abusing it, but it also gives more players a chance at experiencing that kind of role play.
In WoD terms, it's one per sphere because we expect spheres to rarely interact. It's an easy way to let people play all the games they want (Changeling and Geist, e.g.), and each of those sub-games have enough people to sustain themselves.
On a BSG game, I might consider "civilian" and "military" to be the sub-games and allow one character per category, but maybe there is so much overlap that you don't need to bolster numbers of either group to keep the interest going.
One highly successful single-sphere oWoD game, Sanguine Nobikis, I don't think had an alt policy at all but few people took the option to play more than one character.
Aether, an original themed game about four political races did the "one per race and only one leader" thing.
There are many ways to handle alts, but I sincerely would want to make sure that there was enough going on in the entire game before limiting that number to "one".
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@surreality said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
'no more than one fachead/family head/gov position/etc.' and this problem is rapidly resolved.
I'm not so sure it is. I'm not saying that people who play multiple alts are bad people and are doing wrong fun. I'm not judging them. I'm just saying I've found I prefer to play on games with alt restrictions. I find that it encourages a healthier game. When I said 'roles' I didn't mean it necessarily just as leadership roles, but more in the expansive way @Pyrephox was talking about.
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@Thenomain That's essentially what I'm talking about, yeah.
The smaller the game -- or the smaller the game's focus -- the lower the ideal number is going to be. It's not something there's a one size fits all answer to, which is what I kept seeing suggested (sometimes with bad apple examples portrayed as being universal).
On a game like the one that spawned this thread, which is mage only? If they don't have m/m+ as well, one alt isn't an unreasonable prospect.
On a game like TR or FC? Not so much.
@lordbelh I know what you're saying in this regard, but that's not, IMHO, as damaging as the restriction can be. People are considerably less likely to create more niche concepts when they know that character is their one shot to find roleplay on a game. That results in a significant net loss to a game's environment, to my reckoning.
Also, it's worth noting that while there are people who are happy with playing just one character each on three games, there are also people who prefer to only play at one game at any given time. It's simply a difference in play style. That doubles down on the restriction for them, while the 'player investment' of time/energy/attention etc. would be the same for both people if they were both allowed to play three characters.
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@VulgarKitten said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
Props for the thread title.
Indeed. I also would have accepted, "Yo Dawg I heard you like Alts so we put an Alt in your Alt so you can Alt while you Alt."
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@surreality said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
On a game like TR or FC? Not so much.
I'm not so sure. I've tried playing on TR and FC several times and like a puppy after a bone, I've just recently created a new alt there. Maybe this time, the game will stick, but in the past, I've always found it difficult to get established and invested there. One of the main reasons why is that the character base is shifting sand.
There's so much turnover in PCs that I can't find my character's 'core group'. Since, IMHO, the #1 advantage that a MU has over other forms of RP is that it allows the player to focus on interpersonal relationships, when a policy on a game makes that more difficult, the power behind the game is somewhat lessened.
I just want to make sure that I've said explicitly, and what I've heard most other people on this thread who are arguing for restrictive alt policies say, is that on a personal level, I find games with restrictive alt policies to be more engaging and more likely to lead to long-term play on my part, but I also realize that not everyone feels the same way that I do. They are not wrong and certainly there should be games that appeal to people who like playing a variety of different concepts in a single setting.
However, at the moment, the types of games being offered lean to that latter type of person, so when I see a game being developed that appeals to me, I think it's fine and right that someone should point out that such a policy is desired and wanted by a portion of the community, especially because you know the people who dislike the policy will be vocal about wanting it removed.
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@surreality said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
Some games already do have a 'no more than one fachead/family head/gov position/etc.' and this problem is rapidly resolved.
In theory perhaps. In practice... the obvious example I can think of in terms of not-quite-but-similar limitations is on ol' TR; the Team Leader of a sphere can't play in it! Cue the 'assistant TLs' of spheres where no one was ever actually a team leader, or if one was it would have obviously been a courtesy sidekick.
I really have no horses in this race at all since I don't alt but arbitrary restrictions tend to do the opposite of what they set out to do; they only nominally contain the people they're supposed to but inconvenience everyone else - and there's often a silent majority somewhere - without any tangible benefits to show for it.
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Two quick cents. I don't see alt policy (none/one/four/whatever you can play) as being the issue that makes or breaks a game.
Some of the arguments say less players means more positions of powers for players, but I support what @Arkandel said earlier, positions of power shouldn't make or break a character and their story. Someone else mentioned interpersonal relationships are a prime draw to Mu*'ing over say TT or even OTT campaigns that are episode to episode.
Ultimately I think it comes down to the player and their investment into their storyline that fits within theme/meta that makes or breaks interest in a game for that player. A couple months ago I asked about meta and such and everyone seemed to favor staff having to run things, I'm still not sure if this is the way to go, staff having to control meta to the point of giving folks something to do.
This may be from decades of being a daytime player only. The majority of staff only do things in evenings, just the way it is ... all the haters that come to my places and complain about daytime activity, you've no idea how much worse people that play during my connect times have it with the feeling left out part.
I've always just made my own story, folks can call it sandboxing, but I can't get into meta which is 90%++ only in evenings (low estimate to be honest because I'm trying to be nice). I always find it that interest should be player driven.
If they want 4 alts in less active relationship circles (@faraday mentioned 4 meaningful relationships per PC regardless of alt policy, but some may only RP with 1-2 others only), only want to focus on social drama and their IC relationship, and it keeps them playing with those others, let them have at it. If someone else only wants one alt and interacts with the entire grid and drives their own stories separate from staff meta, more power to them.
I view Mu* more as an environment to encourage creativity, to give players some place to play, to hopefully be safe for them to come and simply enjoy themselves. If that commitment is once a month and they want an adventure on their one day a month, I think the opportunity should exist. If they are daily and socialize only, that opportunity should be there (dependent on activity of other players).
I see a lot of focus always pointed at staff, staff should have alt policy, the should police all player activity. I'm more aimed at the player, if a player can't go out and make their own fun, or find the players that do that, its more on the player, regardless of who has one alt and the ones who have 12 alts.
Sorry, I took the thread and borrowed the soapbox for another topic, but it seems fitting. Arguing about alts, when, if maintaining interest and vestment in a game is what the discussion is about, seems off the heart of the discussion.
Edit to add instead of posting my own reply:
The common topic 'There is nothing to do here', I place more on player than staff. Staff should have opportunities for things to happen, I think it gets players together and that should be the focus of meta, getting folks to mingle more, creating some new potential hooks for players storlyines, introducing ideas of what can be done on the game to help inspire their own plots and stories.. I think things to do anywhere, having something to do, is on the player. I think restrictive PrP policy is more damaging to activity than alt policies and blaim staff for not allowing player creativity to flourish.
