How to reduce the necessity of alts, change death penalty

[Altich]

It seems very clear now that the only thing that can be done to reduce alts, is reducing the necessity of them. I've thought of a way to achieve that:

Make death causing loss of a fixed amount of LP and FEPs proportional to your highest skill and attribute (and not a percentage). That way, the loss will be about the same if an alt or if your main char dies. This amount of LP should be relative to your highest stat. For example if you have a crafter and a farmer alt with the same of the respective skill, the loss of LPs of one dieing will be the same compared to a character that is crafter AND farmer and dies.

As I think of it, the amount of LP lost should be roughly equal to the amount needed of your highest skill. (for example, if you have 100 UA and 1 to everything else, you lose the 50k LP needed to make the 100UA. If everything is 100, then you still lose 50k LP.) About attributes (FEPs), things might be slightly different: Because different jobs usually require more than one attribute, maybe there is need to reduce them more after death (But still fixed amount of FEPs relative to the highest attribute). Anyways, I'm not sure about the exact amounts, but you get the idea.

For players that don't use alts, this will make a player that is, for example, farmer, crafter, smither, to lose 1/3 of his work. For someone who has 3 alts, a farmer, a crafter and a smither, a death will also be roughly 1/3 of his work (if they are equal). This doesn't completely elimitate he advantage of alts, but it reduces it significanly.

I know that the above makes death less destructive for people that doesn't use alts, but it doesn't make any difference for people that use alts. In short, it gives all players most of the benefits of using alts, without needing them to use them.

You might ask, is that good? Well, lets be honest: If a countermeasure against alts (like the one I suggested) is not implemented, then at the end, some people will still manage to make alts and will have a huge advantage against casual people who, especially now in hafen, just don't want to bother traveling all the world to find alts. That makes casual players totally unable to compete. Since the new spawning system doesn't completely eliminate the alt problem, I think it is necessary to reduce/ eliminate the advantage of having them at all costs. Otherwise there is no point to just make it harder to make alts.

Any thoughts on this matter?

[mvgulik]

Any thoughts on this matter?

Nope. I got suddenly interrupted by a strange big urge to visit khanacademy.

Weird

[hathaway]

I hope Jorbtar just benchmark multi-account policy of tribal wars, don't remove other convenient shits.

[ggx7]

I agree about reducing alts, but something should be done about the botting and macroing. Multiple types of deterrants will make it annoying for hopefully most of these individuals. At worst, a character wipe even ban if people are caught cheating.

[Altich]

I hope Jorbtar just benchmark multi-account policy of tribal wars, don't remove other convenient shits.

For a free game with 2 developers it's not easy to enforce these policies. Is will be kind of difficult to catch alts of people who know what they are doing. On the other hand, casual players will be discouraged to make alts and they will have a disadvantage.

I agree about reducing alts, but something should be done about the botting and macroing. Multiple types of deterrants will make it annoying for hopefully most of these individuals. At worst, a character wipe even ban if people are caught cheating.

Same here. The developers said that catching bots is not very easy. And, if you can't catch ALL bots, then by banning only some botters you give a huge advantage to the few people who evade bot-check. Casuals will be banned, and pro cheaters who know what they are doing will gain a big advantage.

When HnH becomes a commercial game that can afford GMs and such stuff, maybe there will be a bot and alt banning system. But for now the solution is to reduce the benefits of these abuses. So take a look at my suggestion please

[LadyV]

New target, same argument.

Alts can and are abused. But hindering alts should only be done to a degree. There are far bigger issues to address than alts. The issue most have with abundant alts is their factory farming and botting. Some of the need for bots seems to have been addressed. Now shared hearth spawns address' factory farming, at least early world.

Radical and harsh crackdown on multiple accounts will only hurt Haven. A lot of good also come with these things so examine that in your thoughts as well. Yes alts need a diminishing return tot heir benefits but such balance has to be nudged more than forced.

Haven is one of those games that having more characters actually helps you, even as a non botter and an independent hermit. It is also a great way to just forget your main character and go explore the world now and then. Messed up your first character? Make a new one and try over. All in all alts are not the problem. People who abuse mechanics, cheat, and bot are far more to blame than alts.

Beliefs are being removed in their current form so that opens the possibility we don't need to divide labor so much. Added with the other changes Jorb and Loftar are addressing issues. Lets wait and see what comes forth before whole heartedly chopping at perceived problems.

[epicless]

It seems very clear now that the only thing that can be done to reduce alts, is reducing the necessity of them. I've thought of a way to achieve that:

Make death causing loss of a fixed amount of LP and FEPs proportional to your highest skill and attribute (and not a percentage). That way, the loss will be about the same if an alt or if your main char dies. This amount of LP should be relative to your highest stat. For example if you have a crafter and a farmer alt with the same of the respective skill, the loss of LPs of one dieing will be the same compared to a character that is crafter AND farmer and dies.

As I think of it, the amount of LP lost should be roughly equal to the amount needed of your highest skill. (for example, if you have 100 UA and 1 to everything else, you lose the 50k LP needed to make the 100UA. If everything is 100, then you still lose 50k LP.) About attributes (FEPs), things might be slightly different: Because different jobs usually require more than one attribute, maybe there is need to reduce them more after death (But still fixed amount of FEPs relative to the highest attribute). Anyways, I'm not sure about the exact amounts, but you get the idea.

For players that don't use alts, this will make a player that is, for example, farmer, crafter, smither, to lose 1/3 of his work. For someone who has 3 alts, a farmer, a crafter and a smither, a death will also be roughly 1/3 of his work (if they are equal). This doesn't completely elimitate he advantage of alts, but it reduces it significanly.

I know that the above makes death less destructive for people that doesn't use alts, but it doesn't make any difference for people that use alts. In short, it gives all players most of the benefits of using alts, without needing them to use them.

You might ask, is that good? Well, lets be honest: If a countermeasure against alts (like the one I suggested) is not implemented, then at the end, some people will still manage to make alts and will have a huge advantage against casual people who, especially now in hafen, just don't want to bother traveling all the world to find alts. That makes casual players totally unable to compete. Since the new spawning system doesn't completely eliminate the alt problem, I think it is necessary to reduce/ eliminate the advantage of having them at all costs. Otherwise there is no point to just make it harder to make alts.

Any thoughts on this matter?

Interesting, but it significantly reduces the cost of death. Powerful players who distribute stats and skills evenly for everything would only lost 1/8 of their stats or 1/11 of their skills on death. That doesn't seem like a "painful" cost to me.

[bmjclark]

Even with your suggestion i'd still make farming and crafting alts because they'll never die. As well as multiple fighters in case one of my fighters dies . This doesn't really solve that. Losing a crafter or having one lose some of it's stats is way more devastating than losing a fighter, i still would never risk a crafter by bringing it outside, even if i lost less for putting all my eggs in one basket.

EDIT: there's also what the poster above me said , i didn't really think about the cost of dying with this. Death still has to be painful in this game.

[Altich]

Interesting, but it significantly reduces the cost of death. Powerful players who distribute stats and skills evenly for everything would only lost 1/8 of their stats or 1/11 of their skills on death. That doesn't seem like a "painful" cost to me.

I already mentioned that: Players already have the ability to lose only a small amount of LP after death. The way is to make alts. With my suggestion this will not change.
My suggestion will make people that don't really feel like abusing alts, to not have a huge disadvantage against other players who use lots of alts. For people using alts (that now is the majority of players), death will still cause the same overall cost as it is in the current world (for example if someone has 8 alts, he will lose about 1/8 of his progress).
There still has to be some balance as to how many LP you should lose of course. There are classes that need more than one skills and attributes, and others that need only one. So I don't claim that 100% of the highest skill is the right amount: I just used it as an example.

Even with your suggestion i'd still make farming and crafting alts because they'll never die. As well as multiple fighters in case one of my fighters dies . This doesn't really solve that. Losing a crafter or having one lose some of it's stats is way more devastating than losing a fighter, i still would never risk a crafter by bringing it outside, even if i lost less for putting all my eggs in one basket.

My idea doesn't target on eliminating the alt problem. It targets on making alt users a bit more equal to players not using alts. In the new world, making alts will be harder (but NOT impossible.) That makes casual players who just doesn't want to spent time making alts having a huge disadvantage. My suggestion aims at reducing this disadvantage.
If you make 2 warriors, you will be forced to have less LP on each of them. I think the developers have already mentioned that in the new curios system they will try to reduce "farming" alts without doing anything.

Alts can and are abused. But hindering alts should only be done to a degree. There are far bigger issues to address than alts. The issue most have with abundant alts is their factory farming and botting. Some of the need for bots seems to have been addressed. Now shared hearth spawns address' factory farming, at least early world.

The developers made clear that part of the reason they want to remove HS is to reduce alts. As I mentioned before, that increases the gap between casual players (that won't make alts) and other players.
Because of making the creation of alts more difficult, it is also necessary that SOMETHING must be done to make alts less necessary. Otherwise, the developers did a worse job and by that action only widened the gap between casual players and others. In that case I would suggest to just make it easier again to create alts, so at least it would be equal for everyone.

Don't take me wrong; I believe that the developers have already found a smart way to eliminate the functionality of alts, probably much better than mine. I'm just posting what I thought, just in case I might provide some help.