Some initial thoughts, I haven't spent any large amount of time thinking about
it.

Some pluses: parties might be more likely to happen at slow times of day.
It's not uncommon for a party to fail at 6:00 EET because you can only get 1
(or 0) conjus. I like conju.. 1-2 days a week. The rest other 4-5 are dead
time. If I can't be a party, might be nice to log on my ranger and solo a
bit! Or Log off my ranger I've been playing a lot to log on my conju for this
party, otherwise party wouldn't happen!


Possible downside: highbie cabal, xxx 9 players will never party with anyone
else because they can cover any possible party combination they need. THey
won't take some tarm/conju outside the clan. This would be more of a problem
during heavy finn times I imagine.

Some ideas if it does get implmented: exp pool cumulative between all your
characters (all count towards 300M threshold), all your characters share same
explore count, all secondaries have an additional (10, 20,30, whatever %) exp
penalty.

It's an interesting idea with both pros and cons. Personally, I'd prefer
_heavily_ reduced reinc costs, both in exp and cash, to help out the 'flavor
of the week' players. We're already penalized by pretty much every guild rep
system!

-Nu

More brain storming:
If you're truely worried about highbie cartel, main secondaries have a max
level of PrimaryCharacterLevel -30. Tertiary characters are PrimaryCharacterLe
vel -45.

An idea to help us 'flavor of the week' reincers, reduced gold cost if you
take slow/normal method instead of instant, until you reach your previous
levels!

-Nu

people would prolly do some merchants to prot/repair/fw their real gear, this
might lower the merch income even further, same applies to alch

TPs should prolly be available to share too, ie, i have 20 tps, both of my
chars get 20tps

Grinding of cash would not be a problem, you can grind that with your primary
char aswell

Would courage to try out those combos you never wanted to before, tho i agree
that at least secondaries should get some discount for reinccosts

Why not allow both options that have been discussed in the thread. Allow
people who want to be anonymous (like I would want) just have a character and
play within the old rules of multiplayer. For those who want to share TP and
eq (and other suffeli stuff), require them to register as a secondary. That
way if someone wants to be anonymous, they have to give up something rather
useful.
Also, I think when secondaries were banded some 10 years ago, one could just
stop playing that character. So there are probably a decent number of old
secondaries out there that people might want to 'resurrect.' So if
secondaries are allowed back, it'd be nice if it could backfit to those old
secondaries.
Stal.

Maybe it's just me, but this seems pointless. Sounds like this is just
another way to play something different because you A) Don't have the cash to
reinc. Don't feel like paying the high reinc tax.

So, why not lower the reinc tax time table and the cost of guild levels?

quite easy to avoid this, lower taxes for the smaller (expwise) char

eh, the whole thing smacked of the whole "bloodlines" concept that I know is
used by some other muds, and the whole thing just always seemed sorta lame to
me. When you come right down to it it's minmaxing, and the fact that you KNOW
beforehand that you'd have to code in all sorts of restrictions in order to
keep it from being horrendously abused, well doesn't that sort of hint that
it's not really a good idea to begin with? Why generate the headache?

Plus, I've always liked the fact that since you have one character in this mud
and one character only, the things you do and the way you interract with
others really counts. If you are here for a long time you have a definite
notoriety, whether good or bad, and the community treats you accordingly.

Agreed, I'd rather just see a lower of reinc tax/level cost as other
suggested. Although the theory of multiple chars sounds fun to play around
with, its just too much of a hassle. Batmud and big changes lead to year long
whine fests. I'd rather see tweaks to whats already here. Especially to the
reinc system which I think should be made much more flowery.

I don't see why people would disagree with that either, if you reinc more
often then the hardcore rep makers get even bigger bonus to being joyless
automatons, and the rest of us who actually want to enjoy reincing often get
our wish too.

While I agree with Nu's concept of being able to switch character to enable
parties, I agree much more with Cannedheat's thoughts on the matter.

I think that sharing eq, money, TPs, explore, well anything between characters
is lame. A horrid idea. Rather than shared rooms and shared names, I think it
would be better to go the oppose route. EQ with the name of a primary
character would be unusable by a secondary and vice versa. A secondary should
not be an extension of the primary, it should be an alternative.

That said, I think that limiting players to one character is the best route to
go. I'd rather see coding efforts go into other areas such as new zones,
enhancing existing guilds (*cou-guild quests-gh*), improving playability (e.g.
travel command, yay!), etc.

As an arch in a former life (and former decade), the thought of codifying
multi-playing makes me squirm and twitch. I think I'm developing a facial tick
just from writing this. The opportunity for abuse is too profound. Legalizing
that abuse wouldn't enhance gameplay and would lead to people wanting tertiary
and quaternary characters. Closing all of the loopholes would take excessive
coding efforts and enforcement vigilance.

Beliar Balari

There are couple guilds in this game which are mostly based on player
interaction and i really would not like to see secondaries in those. Merchants
and alchemists are guilds that requires you to act with other players,
secondary characters would lessen this interaction, if not prevented.

I actually would welcome secondary characters, i know it would lower the
chance of random players coming into parties, but eq societies has already
done that.

So what i'm suggesting is that there would be restricted guild access for
secondaries and maybe some cooldown period(not to have pl tiger to open doors,
go ld and then you log back in with primary). Since i don't think we need any
less player interaction currently.

Personally, I am in favor of this.

It goes without saying that getting into an eq party in certain reincs is more
difficult than others, at times impossible. This is especially the case when
considering lower exp totals.

Also, Like Blayke and Nu have said, finding certain class combinations during
American night time is fairly hard.

Other than availablity of classes, a few things come to mind.

Multiple characters online: It would be possible to prevent access of a 2ndary
if the main is online. Ip checks would be irrelevant in this case. Ooga had a
nice solution to this.

Tp's: How would they affect your 2ndary? Personally I am in favor of either:
your 2ndary gets the same amount of tp's as you, or you have to split your tps
between your main and your 2ndary.

Guild Level cost: I don't see any reason for it to cost more or less for your
2ndary's guild levels. You would already be grinding cash for 2 characters to
reinc. At the moment you pay 1m-1.5m to reinc to lvl 90+.

Secondary's guild choice: People raise the concern that people will make
merchant 2ndaries to make millions of reagents or prot/fw their armour. To me
this seems to be a case of "to each his own". I would personally make my
2ndary of some other class combination that is fun for me to play. Also there
is the possibility of putting my main character into a guild that requires a
lot of dedication and is adverse to reincarnation, such as nun, barbarian,
knights, ect. There would be times that I would want to stop playing that
character and I would be able to feed my need to try something new with my
2ndary.

Explore %: This isn't really a big deal. Many people can run explore to 50%
explore relativily easily. A player could run those explore rooms to make exp
for their 2ndary and to them access to Navigator levels without much of a
problem. As I see it, special explore rooms for wanderer levels is a bigger
problem than explore %. A majority of the game population is still fighting to
get enough special explore rooms for just 2 wanderer levels. So I would think
that if Explore % is shared, then special explore room count should also be
shared, but in the end, this doesnt seem to be a pressing issue.

Eq names: I like the idea of sharing eq names on your equipment with your
2ndary. I don't really see what the problem would be by sharing that equipment
with your 2ndary. People will just share their unnamed eq with their 2ndary
until they can get their friends to make them the eq named or lead it
themselves. Really, its more of a band-aid on another situation that is
already present.

Exp pool: I agree that Exp pool should be cumulative for all your characters.

In reponse to problems others have said might be an issue.

Sales cheating: I think the option of having the characters main listed in the
2ndary's finger would solve this problem.

Harassment: At the moment escaping to avoid harassment or wanting to be left
alone while you play a 2ndary isn't an option. So... why should it matter for
the future. If this is really a big deal, perhapes there could be a new
ability added to the ability room for 2ndaries that hides the finger info.
Thus forcing a certain amount of commitment to the 2ndary and making it a less
expendable asset.


Too much money in the game: People have been saying that this is the case even
now, and yet others complain that they do not have enough money. Some people
could decide to make a rangerbarb and grind 1m cash a week, others might want
to make a merchant to make their own reagents so they don't have to spend
cash. And yet, still others might decide that since there aren't enough
mage/conjurers in the game, that they want to make their 2ndary one so that
when a party starts they can join it. It is all a matter of personal choice.

Cabal's: These cabal's are already present. I can't really see the problem
expanding. Already availablitiy constraints and "hands" requirements force
certain players to band together and do eq together excluding most of the mud
population.

Guild level cap: Why? Would kinda defeat the point of being able to escape to
play something else if you were capped at level 70. This would also make
certain combinations undoable.

Interactivity with other people: I have played several other online games.
Ones that offered multiple characters, and of course some that allowed only
one character, both with low populations and high populations. I've never seen
a correlation between lack of interactivity and multiple characters. There are
cases of where a guild would be able to be self sustaining, but that is
already a possibility. Even at the moment, I've made friends with people that
I can get free/at cost reincs/repairs/fw's/wtfever. I'll still end up paying
someone else I don't know for some of these services because I don't want to
wait for a friend to log on or become available. I think this is a problem
that extends beyond the mud, to a persons ability to make friends and/or
interact with others.

I apologize for the big posts.

I'm totally indifferent on the subject.
It's intriguing, yet horribly complicated... or is it?

Here's a recap of the bestest ideas:

- Login through main char.
- Cooldown on switching (1/boot).
- Restricted guilds. (merchant/alchs/tiger) Sec can't
join one and primary can't switch, if member of one.
- Each char on its own (eqnames/TPs/pool/mobprots/explore...)

Everything else stays the same. Anyone see potential abuses not
covered by the list above?

Zin,

I ask you for clarification. Rather than getting into the nitty gritty
details of implementation aspects and picking it apart bottom-up, lets try a
top down approach. Define a problem, brainstorm solutions. Multiple
characters may or may not be that solution.

So my question for you is: Is there a specific problem or problems you're
trying to address by suggestiong multiple characters?

-Nu

I think multiple characters are a terrible idea which would fundamentally hurt
the game on many levels. It would serve mainly those people who best learned
how to exploit it.

If it were allowed, the benefits should be heavily taxed. The idea should be
to remove exp, money, and TPs from the game. Allow TPs to be transferable, but
at a cost of 2 TPs per 1 transferred. Secondary explore experience should be
halved. Allow EQ to be shared, but without the name. Other benefits should be
similarly limited.

In the end though, you're going to end up with level 1 characters running
around with unlimited cash, a dozen full boons, and armed with vorpal swords.

As for the other argument, free or low-cost reincing also defeats the one
character rule. If you can reinc freely, you can create whatever character you
need for that day, without penalty. People will gravitate toward whichever
guild combo is currently out of tune that week, which necessitates more
tuning.

Developing the interpersonal and organizational skills necessary to form an EQ
party and obtain services from others are part of the game, and furthermore
are the part that makes this an interpersonal experience.