Character Slots - What do you want out of it? [POLL]

[vDrop]

11 hours ago, TiLLeR said:

If you keep them separate then you are offering a 'get out of jail' card to everyone unless swapping characters is closely managed.  I'm all for separate characters but after a year I know lots of people will take advantage of it if we allow it to happen at any time.  A few thoughts:

1.  You choose when you connect and cannot change until the next storm

2.  If you are on the wanted list you cannot change.

This is exactly the only way it'll work. 100% agree with you about too many people whom will take advantage of the system. Really hope to see these two points implemented if character slots become a thing.

[Flori]

No, please dont lock it to the server cycle. Everything EVERYTHING that gets implemented needs to be tweaked because of these immature players that abuse everything? Then get rid of them once and for all! all of them! I am so tired of hearing this.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Flori

[Kota]

No one should be locked from switching characters until a new storm. That idea simply is dumb and super harsh. It punishes the majority of the player base and strips their freedom of role play to contain the few bad apples. Seems counterproductive to force someone to play a character for x amount of time. When most people won’t be able to no life storm to storm. Sick of being punished due to shitlords.

If people want to go and switch characters to avoid role playing with cops and abuse game mechanics just ban them. 

Or

Just lock them from switching if they’re wanted in the MDT problem solved. No damn need to lock it storm to storm or for x amount of time. 

Edited September 16, 2018 by KotaJon91

[TiLLeR]

I don't think it's harsh.. what's so hard about committing to playing a character for x amt of time?  Why would you need to constantly switch?  That just seems disruptive to RP.  The problem to limiting to just the MDT is that they can switch before added, or we haven't had a chance to identify them before adding them.  The current MDT is free text also so not tied to a player id.

[Kota]

Well then arn’t they being disruptive by switching so fast. Punish them with a ban. Not by tying the hands of everyone who may just want to have a few shorter RP encounters playing different characters. With the little amount of time they have. 

Edited September 16, 2018 by KotaJon91

[Thorgs]

9 hours ago, Johan said:

then this might be the solution to fix that

This will just make it easier for them to switch cause for one we don't always get their ID or we get delayed in entering it in the system and that's if they can even tie it to the wanted list??? I mean 3 hours isn't reasonable? like how many times do you need to switch in 3 hours?

[Merr Khan]

Simple. White list character slots to 1 year vets only. Make it a reward for being part of the community and contributing RP. 

[Anton]

This topic has gone far from its original intent

[Kota]

18 minutes ago, Thorgs said:

 I mean 3 hours isn't reasonable? like how many times do you need to switch in 3 hours?

Well to switch from a main to an alt character to play something else then back is at least 2. Which means let’s say 3 hours is the time limit. I would have to play an alt character for three hours before switching back.  I would rather just go pay the 100 and get a license change at city hall if it’s gonna be that handicapped cuz you are then forcing people how long they can or have too RP a character. 

Yes you will get the people who want to abuse it. I get that. But to handicap a gameplay feature for everyone out of fear of what a few people will do is something I would hope would not come with it at launch but more be something maybe changed down the road if it became a huge issue. 

[Tomas García]

@KotaJon91 could you give us an example of what would you go into an alt character for if you are going for a short time?  At the moment the main used if that's allow feels like would be to start some trouble RP or random things and swap back.

I think that a minimum time should be there when you swap characters, but not a whole storm. Yet I would like to hear reasons for a shorter time limit, so go ahead

[Kota]

Two alt characters I play Jessie Hatfield a dumb as rocks character that is good in small doses is comedic relief and comes around and is a good character for others to make fun of and get a laugh out of but not one I would want to play for 3 hours straight. I know of others that RP both husband and wife and hilariously are never in the same place at the same time as they keep switching between the characters at city hall. Other people play characters who are lawyers or doctors but may not be needed for three hours and just for a small amount of time. This time limit idea is a handicap to them. 

As most of my RP tends to be more long drawn out and not the short dynamic kind others do  being able to take a pause from my normal civ RP within the time I may have that day to play would be nice without committing hours to the switching timer. 

Also side note if someone wants to use an alt character to cause trouble don’t sit there and act like that’s a bad thing  so long as they pay for it with fines and jail time  they’re off the hook.  Cops need more interactions then just chasing their tails with drug calls all day that rarely provide any sort of different or substantial role play. So don’t shame criminals who may want to give the police something more dynamic to do on shift  personally I have always tried to provide police with interesting encounters that isn’t the same shit they tend to see all the time. And having the freedom to swap to another character to help bring that level of RP handicapped by a forced time limit or mechanic holding my hand telling me no no you have to wait in character switch timeout a bit longer is just annoying.  

 

[Tomas García]

Actually with @KotaJon91  point about lawyers, and so forth other characters, could be nice to have a chance to jump back and forth. But it's a two sided sword.... In a way is meta to jump into a character that's needed.  Like I stated before there is good and bad meta, even some might not think alike. So I think the time lock is based in can we trust the whole player base to do that kind of meta for the good of the RP in the city or some will abuse it. Sometimes adding rules or limits is because finding out when someone is abused and probe it can get so hard that sometimes the better way is prevent it, even if it has a down side. Since no system is perfect.

[Johan]

If abusing something like this is a problem and has already been a problem when people change clothes etc, I can't see how it would get any worse. And if it's already a problem, why not just start banning those who change clothing/appearance because that for sure is disruptive RP? 

I believe if they add character slots, you have to go to X place on the map to swap between characters and it still would be easier to go to a barber/clothing store to change your appearance in the "old way" and most of the time that probably still is faster way to do it if you are being chased. 

[TiLLeR]

2 minutes ago, Johan said:

If abusing something like this is a problem and has already been a problem when people change clothes etc, I can't see how it would get any worse. And if it's already a problem, why not just start banning those who change clothing/appearance because that for sure is disruptive RP? 

I believe if they add character slots, you have to go to X place on the map to swap between characters and it still would be easier to go to a barber/clothing store to change your appearance in the "old way" and most of the time that probably still is faster way to do it if you are being chased. 

Because we should manage as much through code so we don't have to baby sit players.  often people do it b/c it's allowed and don't think far enough ahead to realize the negative impact.  I'd rather do less admining and let the code handle it tbf.  Banning is not fun for both sides.

[Chase McCane (Fludiddy)]

If you're going to limit character switches. Then I change my vote to shared everything.  Secondly, why not just make it that if you change characters then you have to, for all intents and purposes, requeue up for the server: 1.) It would deter people to just instantly switch characters to be disruptive or avoid RP 2.) People that are jailed might think twice about switching to serve their time at an "easier" point (e.g.: Do I serve my time for 30 minutes or take the chance of a 45 minute queue?) 3.) I feel it would be healthier for the community and give more people an opportunity in during a server cycle because you don't just hand off your server slot to somebody you wan to give it to. 

I think by adding this little bit would make it so it would inherently limit the time available to character switch without having some forced constraint in place.  People are going to be disruptive no matter what mechanic is in place - as long as everybody stays vigilant, like we do most of the time against the trolls, then I don't see how this would be any different than the status quo. 

[Thorgs]

2 hours ago, Chase McCane (Fludiddy) said:

, for all intents and purposes, requeue up for the server: 1.) It would deter people to just instantly switch characters to be disruptive or avoid RP

I could possibly get behind this idea of re-queue to switch 

[vDrop]

If coding allows it,

ONLY prevent character swapping if wanted.

or

If not possible...Combat Logging is still a rule...If you know you are wanted, don't switch characters. If you do, consider it a combat log? 

Just my friendly thoughts. 

[Kota]

Re-Queue to switch is laughably too harsh of an option. Who wants to jump back in queue just to Role play when the queue times can be hours sometimes. Let alone you wanna punish someone who wants to bring something different to the server by saying hey I like that you can RP multiple characters but fuck off and get to the back of the line.

We shouldn't be discouraging people from wanting to switch characters and experiment with their role play considering we are a medium RP server now... And having people wait long periods of time just to be able to play and try new things with characters by forcing them to jump to the back of the line is exactly that. 

Drop's idea is pretty good but I will say it a bit different. Tie it to the wanted system and train officers to be accountable for getting bolo's out... Or treat it like a combat log and stop trying to babysit and start holding the players accountable for breaking the rules... 

Edited September 17, 2018 by KotaJon91

[TiLLeR]

To the original purpose of this post:

I'd personally rather see the accounts tied together from a backed (Option 1) .  My characters have less to do with the money in my bank and more to do with the interaction on the server.  I main police for certain but I do have a few characters I bring out from time to time.  I'd love to use the paycheck that I've made on Cop to support my RP with the other characters including buying vehicles that match their persona.  Given that it's an RP server I'd rather players not have to grind money on two characters.  That would mean less RP time.  So for me... combined is best.

As far as the stuff not solicited, I again don't understand why asking players to stick to a persona for a certain period of time is unacceptable.  Maybe not a full restart but certainly a few hours seems reasonable.  Switching more frequently could disrupt others interactions with you.   I think some extremes have been discussed like going to the back of the queue, but I'm sure we can find a middle ground that enables people to swap characters but also has some coded features which help prevent abuse. 

I get the argument of 'well I'm good don't punish me'.  I don't view restrictions as a punishment, I view them as a balance.  If you believe we are truly a medium RP server then it's reasonable to expect the server to manage some of the balancing aspects.  We are non whilelisted and have over 40k unique visitors to the city.  Manually managing that size of a community is not practical.

[Chase McCane (Fludiddy)]

It's not meant to be a harsh punishment - it was an idea to keep it fair so people can get time on the server.  With a character slot system it's going to be even more difficult to get on the server.  Before, if people were done playing their character they would just log and give the slot to the next person in the queue.  With a slot system, when they're done playing their character they'll just give themselves the next slot in queue to play a different character.  It wouldn't stop people from experimenting with their RP or playing different characters.  It just means that maybe you'll just have to be more mindful of the server cycle and possibly commit to one character during a heavy server cycle and plan accordingly. I think if we're doing character slots you have to look at it as now having (if you allow 3 characters per main account) a community of 120k unique visitors NOT 40k.  And people don't get priority queue unless there is specific reasoning behind it.

A combat log is a combat log.  It doesn't matter if you're switching characters or leaving the server completely - if your task is to be disruptive or to avoid RP - your stay, no matter what system, is going to be short.

[Tomas García]

The reason why re-queue doesn't seem balanced for me is because the 'punishment' is different depending on the time of the day. Re-queue at certain hours is right away while at others might mean 2 hours wait or more. Simply I don't that can be a fair tool to balance things. @TiLLeR and many others are saying it right, the point of some limit in the time inside a character is so people play decent roles with their characters, so going to play a scene that's short in a character either was setup OOC or it's going to be weak.  And any involved in any good and intense RP, will realize that those usually take quite a bit of time. RP is telling a story, so no matter how tiny the scene the bigger the build up the better it will be the core moment of it and there is always the ending. Just like a movie... people try to jump into the center of it and they miss the other parts that are so important.


Another good reason for not allowing 'quick' swaps is to protect the city and cops from people getting away from "wanted" or even get away from another group of civs that are looking for the character to deal with something.  It's sad but it's a reality people do that or just log out. Frankly if they get in that situation, they should be happy, they are building their story further they have active interactions and that's great to RP. Logging off or swapping characters in that case is just 'Don't wanna loose' mentality some have, and they are loosing a lot while ruining other's fun. So again, that's a reason to put a limit in quick swaps, since in some cases it can really affect negatively to other players.

And I also support the option 1 since, the money tends to be like 'credits' for the player to use on his/her characters and not just ingame money that represent the character.
--------------

@Serpico None of the options mentioned the clothes presets. Will you make those for each character or will the be the outfits common to all?

Edited September 18, 2018 by Tomas García
Adding a question for Serpico

[Victor]

Am I only one who does not see any issues in people change characters even if they commited crime? Fled the crime scene. Didnt get caught. City of millions of people so in RP sense he went underground. Just dont make it so that you can change character on the spot.

All these timers and cooldowns and other nonesense is just restrictions upon people who want to roleplay and in my opinion then we better off without any character slots.

 

 

[TiLLeR]

5 hours ago, Victor said:

All these timers and cooldowns and other nonesense is just restrictions upon people who want to roleplay and in my opinion then we better off without any character slots.

You mean run away in a super car that is impossible to catch just to switch characters so you are not wanted nor can be caught... yeah I have a problem with that.  It's not RP to run away - it's avoiding RP.

[Victor]

6 hours ago, TiLLeR said:

You mean run away in a super car that is impossible to catch just to switch characters so you are not wanted nor can be caught... yeah I have a problem with that.  It's not RP to run away - it's avoiding RP.

I see it as that persons loss. People who want to roleplay will continue running away from cops because they enjoy it and dont care if they get cought or not. They do it for thrill. People who log after robbing store for example to avoid cops do not find any RP and miss all the fun, their loss. Not yours.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Victor

[Serena]

On 9/14/2018 at 8:29 PM, ImVexal said:

So what did I do when I first joined 0.o?? I had to grind. I wasn't spoon fed I had to progress and dedicated time to where my character is today where I feel if u want a secondary character It should be the same straight off the train.

 

Just my opinion on that.

For me, while I was learning the city, I had no friends and hardly any interactions with people. No one knew my character's name, because there was nothing to know yet. Until I had some money underneath me to build a foundation, I literally was just a peach farmer. A gold farmer. 

Why can people who want to start fresh not do this regardless? And those who want to RP as something else, that does require money since it fits the RP of that new character, don't have to grind again?

If you want to RP a fresh new character there is literally nothing stopping you from doing it right now. But if I want to RP as a rich lawyer, or even just a well-off lawyer, I can't unless I grind money that took me months to get beforehand. That is not fun and personally, is the opposite of getting more RP.

If possible, I think the best of both worlds would be to allow the choice upon character creation.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Serena