[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Freeman]

From: Michael Tresca
> From: Scott A. Farley

>> What about the *advantages* of two or more accounts?

> When did muling become a right?

I think there's more to the issue than muling vs. not-muling.

There are two distinct, incompatible playstyles at odds here:

  -- The first group are the players who roleplay a variety of
  characters depending on their mood.  This is also the camp into
  which powergamers fall: Who don't *want* a character who is good
  with a blaster, great with a chef's apron and handy with a whip.
  They want three distinct characters that they level-up from awful
  to deific: The Blaster Guy, The Chef Guy, The Whip Guy.  I think
  the more hardcore a gamer is, the more likely they are to fall
  into this group, prefering Multi-Char Servers.

  -- The second group are the players who pretty much just play
  themselves.  Every game they play, every character they play, is
  always the same guy, and probably uses the same handle that they
  post to message boards and newsgroups with.  They don't want three
  distinct characters, they just want the one guy, with a variety of
  skills to suit their one and only personality.  I think the more
  casual a gamer is, the more likely they are to fall into this
  group, prefering Single-Char Servers.

Mixing the two mostly sucks for the second group.  Their one
character has a third the total skills as the guy playing three
characters.  Using a skill system: Their one character isn't as good
at Anything as the guy playing three characters.  The MCS players
enjoy more "diversity" as individual players, but at the expense of
seeing as much diversity in-game: Because their min-maxing boils
your skill system down to what is essentially a class-system.

In fact, if you're going with MCS, you might as well just use a
class-n-level system from the git-go: It's easier to balance, it
addresses the Multi-char vs. Single-char ability disparity and, most
importantly, it's what you'll wind-up with anyway.

On the other hand, going with SCS is a big negative for the folk who
prefer to play MCS.  They don't want to "just play themselves",
eagerly want to powergame, and/or don't care if there's less
diversity (of character archetypes) in the world at large, so long
as it means more diversity for them.

If everyone would all play the same way, there wouldn't be an issue.
But it ultimately comes down to a matter of preference.  Some people
like X, some people like Y, and it isn't possible to accomodate both
(or rather, you accomodate one at the expense of the other).

Allowing multi-char doesn't disallow single-char, but it definitely
penalizes the single-char playstyle, for the reasons listed above.

And prohibiting multi-char isn't really possible - at most, it can
be made more difficult playstyle to achieve: You have to buy another
box, another account, play your "alt" on a different server than
your "main", whatever.  If you really want to do it, no one can stop
you, but it's enough of a hassle that your impact on the
Single-Character-playstyle is minimized.  So maybe the skill system
doesn't get hammered-down into a class-system.  Maybe the people who
prefer single-char playstyle aren't second class citizens.

Raph listed lots of the developer/business-side arguments for one
vs. the other, but the players don't care about that stuff so much,
I don't think.  I think as far as the players are concerned, they
just flat prefer one playstyle or the other: they're arguing the
benefits of their playstyle over the other (which mostly boil down
to "I prefer my playstyle, thx").

But I don't think that's a completely invalid argument.

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