[MUD-Dev] characters per account

[AR Schleicher]

From: F. Randall Farmer <randy at communities.com>
> F. Randall Farmer: (going out on a limb...)
>
> This "goal" of one account/person is not possible. This is the same
> sort of hubris that went into the Original UO design decision
> for "realism" at the expense of playabilty: No Instant Messaging
> between players. I remember the first days of UO: "Oh! You're
> new! You can't find me here unless you download ICQ at
> www.miribilis.com, here's my UIN and the UINs of guild members..."

I disagree.  I think it's possible but requires some serious tradeoffs, in
order to discourage multiple accounts.  (In this case, trading realism for
playability, which UO didn't want to do.)  Something that I think might work
well, is this: Imagine if you allowed a job system to exist, where skills
unrelated to your job would be remembered, but unusable.  Let's say you were
a warrior, but your armor was broken.  You could have, in the past, worked
your blacksmithing skill up to the maximum as a blacksmith, and then left
that job.  Just switch to that job, and repair your armor, then switch back
to being a warrior.    Switching needs to have some small cost (say, you
have to take the time to visit a local employment agency building, or you
need to be in your home), but if it's smaller than the cost of changing to
another character, you've just encouraged people to use one character
instead of two.  A worthwhile goal, in my opinion.

Anyways, I haven't fully thought about the above type of system.  The
closest example of it I can think of at the moment would be the job system
used in the console RPG game Final Fantasy Tactics, for the playstation.  If
anyone knows of any other good systems like this, I'd like to know about
them. :)

AR Schleicher
ars at iag.net






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