Alt Abuse

[Justice]

Something needs to be done about alt abuse. People are just making alts to steal and nobody can do anything about it. The game is becoming unplayable because thieves can simply threaten to rob you dry unless.. well nothing. They'll just do it. And they DO. I've walked around the countryside and seen nothing but theft clues at every settlement. My own cabin in the woods has been continuously robbed by new characters and I've seen them in the act. The people don't even want the items, they're just taking them away from us.

[Raephire]

I agree, this goes beyond crime and punishment in game, this is griefing and the admins should volunteer player guides to find these players and warn them. To be outside the game and not interact with it at all aside from a few unique skills such as teleporting running fast, never getting hungry, and about 800% run speed.

All their powers would do would allow them to login to their "guide" hang out around brodgars circle until someone reports an issue, and they can research it.

When they finish researching they can report the issue to jorb or another administrator, for proper dealing.

Please understand people, that this game is MASSIVE. and the admins barely have time to read all the forum posts, let alone reply to them - they have a lot of work to do.

This delegation would ease up a lot of player stress and allow the admins to continue working while not having to look at and deal with issues.

This would also allow for a new : command - :report - which would create a popup message to the guide so whoever is a guide and online at the time will get that message.

Guide characters will be invincible, unable to attack, no skills, no attributes.

This would allow players to ask questions, or get help on the fly.

[StarChaser]

I was thinking about recommending player admins but I don't who the devs could trust so I didn't mention it...

[Vattic]

One way abuse like this could be avoided is to have any alt characters belong to peoples main characters, I imagine it a bit like your alts being serfs to your main character, anything they do wrong would lead them back to your main characters hearthfire and so passing stolen objects to your main wouldn't go unnoticed.

But something does need to be done, I've had my house locked from me and he's looked in all my pots yet no hearthfire.

[Laremere]

Alts shouldn't lead to a main character. However I think that the skills needed to steel should be greatly increased in price, so that a player has to be very well developed in order to go down the path of thief.

[holychicken]

Alts SHOULD lead to a main character. I don't see how you can justify this not being the case. There has to be accountability.

However, that wouldn't solve the problem as people would just create a different account on which to create their alts and it would not lead back to their other characters.

i think it is a bad idea to limit the ability of someone to become a thief until they have played the game for a while. If you want to be a thief, you should be able to become one early on.

But yeah, something has to be done.

[Laremere]

I think I can justify it. If the creators really wanted it to be the way you want it, then you wouldn't be able to steal in the first place. The real point is there is no accountability, except that which is imposed on those who chose to speak with the name of justice.
Making thievery something not accessible would prevent people from making alt accounts to steal for them, without having some work involved.

[Trafalgar]

Alts SHOULD lead to a main character. I don't see how you can justify this not being the case. There has to be accountability.

However, that wouldn't solve the problem as people would just create a different account on which to create their alts and it would not lead back to their other characters.

i think it is a bad idea to limit the ability of someone to become a thief until they have played the game for a while. If you want to be a thief, you should be able to become one early on.

But yeah, something has to be done.

I have an alt (who has a hearth fire) who I'm roleplaying as a completely separate character from my main character, and I wouldn't want the two characters linked just because I play both of them. There are people - a lot of people - who don't understand how to separate characters from players in their mind when one or more of the characters are being roleplayed (not that I'm roleplaying my main at all currently). I wouldn't want one of my characters' relations with various villages and people to be sabotaged by the relations of that roleplayed alt.

[Peter]

Perhaps it would be better to have some connection to one's account with each character... certainly not anything like floating names- though effective, it would be garish and ruin stealth. Something more along the lines of being able to right-click on a char you can see and select "profile" which includes all the info your char can see or otherwise know, plus the account they belong to.
This won't solve the whole "spoof accounts" issue, but perhaps by combining this with only allowing one account per MAC Address or IP could fix that too. While rather draconian, this would go a long way to bringing griefers to justice while allowing chars to be rather independent, provided that legitimate "thief" characters can be respected and any more-respectable chars don't get unfair backwash.

[Yolan]

Exactly. While the current tone of this forum, for example, is typically OOC, in the future we should expect people to be putting more effort into playing a type of character. I might want to have one character who is a nasty necromancer, and another who is a valiant ranger. 'Characters' and 'players' are not necessarily the same.