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Metallumere

Another Mild-Mannered Musings On The Misery Of Alts

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It's been about a year since my first post about this, and with time comes new insights and a more mature mind.
With talk of major updates, I figure it's once again worth sparking discussion into one of the worst aspects Wurm currently and continues to suffer from: Alts.

First, you'll find my previous posts and ravings on this topic here(focusing on alts), and here(focusing on priest-restrictions).
I'll summarize those posts for your convenience now:

  1. It is my belief, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that alts(playing multiple accounts/characters as a singular person) have been and continue to be the absolute worst aspect of Wurm's health.
  2. If it is the case that alts are necessary to enjoy what the game offers, that is evidence of fundamental flaws in the design and function of various game elements, and we should work to remedy that. Alts probably can't and won't be abolished until then.
  3. Alts don't necessary need to be abolished and against the rules, just working to remedy why it is people play alts in the first place would reduce the perceived necessity of having to play one, while still allowing people who, say, enjoy their isolation, to continue to do so.
  4. Alts are a negative feedback loop, and we don't individually entirely know how.
    Edit: 
    1 hour ago, Metallumere said:

    very important that people at least be conscientious of their passivity, or complacency, in using alts to circumvent problems rather than spark discussion to work out solutions.

    Is what I mean by 4.
     

 

 

Alright, with the above in mind, let's elaborate a bit!

 

1.    My belief that alts are bad for the game stems from a myriad of observations and speculation into human behavior in general.
While I am no expert on economics or social studies at all, I'll do my best to try and empirically present valid and tangible reasons and rationalities as to why they are loosely termed as "bad".

In particular, there's a lot we realistically rely on each other for. I don't think it'd be incorrect to say that commerce and currencies are founded on division of labor, for example. Party A has the resources and skills for A-craft, Party B has the resources and skills for B-craft, neither has the time, manpower, or capital for what the other party has, and instead decide to offer each other their goods and services, creating a net-gain for both parties and what could be called a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing reliance and provision for each other.
It could be argued that division of labor is what drives us as a species. When we stopped all being hunter-gatherer generalists and started being specialists as sowers and tinkers and harvesters and such was when we really started to flourish and thrive.
This manifests even in our virtual creations; division of labor and the resulting net-positive loops present themselves in nearly any sort of MMO, co-operative, or online experience. A large portion of MMOs, for example, have players interact with them primarily through classes. The classes themselves are a division of labor; Player A has invested the time and resources into a cleric, Player B has invested the time and resources into a barbarian. Neither necessarily has the time or capital to invest in what the other has, and ultimately they need what the other offers for the most optimal or enjoyable experiences. So, they co-operate of course, and delve dark dungeons relying on each other's particular strengths and talents, resources, etc. Maybe even sell their services to each other.
Something is necessitated, and something is gained from the resulting trade for all parties, in other words.

Wurm sort of fails in this aspect. It has a strong foundation in being an economic game, I'd imagine a large sum of its profits are from silver purchases. This was why real-world trading was abolished several years ago. People paying 20 spacebux for a corbita and giving the currency directly to each other meant that Wurm wasn't making the profit it could have if they had paid with the equivalent of silver instead. So what did the staff do? Abolish and outlaw it. This caused no major long-term issues, as the effective alternative was always in place, it's just that now you can't turn your silver back into real money.
Wurm is a prime example of the aspects of division of labor; there are a myriad of skills, and a lot of them are massive investments of time and silver. It'd be difficult for one person to reasonably focus on every single skill at once, rather, specializing is naturally expected to happen and probably generally does. Whether someone means for it to happen or not, they might find themselves having much higher carpentry skill than anything else.
And while Wurm doesn't have character classes in the traditional sense, it can generally be agreed that priests and non-priests are about the closest we have to that. The same might be said for the pursuit of different meditation paths; each offers something unique, and you can't have it all, so there's a natural division.

Now, what happens to this arguably-fundamental human aspect, the division of labor, when you let people just arbitrarily circumvent it by effectively cloning themselves and operating as several people at once?

Well, there's no co-operation between people of course. That's it. And while commerce and trade would certainly still exist, it undoubtedly exists to a much lesser extent than it would if people couldn't take on any number of copies of themselves capable of specializing in any arbitrary number of things.

    The conclusion: Alts are bad for Wurm. Allowing people to make and simultaneously play any arbitrary number of characters entirely defeats the fundamental aspect of division of labor, and all the economic and co-operative incentives it inherently creates for us as a species. We are losing something quite engaging and enriching here, and it is harming not only the growth of Wurm's player base, but also its profits from silver-purchases.
And while, yes, alts do create subscription profits, it could be argued that the reliance and necessity of needing more people for the optimal experience might ultimately out-profit that.
If Player A explicitly needs assistance in building their structures and gathering the resources, and Player B cannot offer their assistance as they are too busy building a boat and gathering the resources as well, they may instead call up some pals, tell them about Wurm and that they need help, and convince them to hop on to help chop some trees or mine some iron or such. Suddenly you have more people who now need tools and food and such, they may reach out to even more people to those ends, or convince more people to play with them, and well, you get orders of magnitude of growth from that. This is how a lot of games find themselves attaining popularity; 2 people tell 4, 4 tell 8, etc etc etc. It's a net-positive loop. Not encouraging that by totally condoning alts actively harms a principle aspect of player-count growth.



2.    If alts are the most viable solution, or strictly necessary to enjoy the most of what the game offers, that is evidence of critical flaws in the game's design and current implementations.
One of the strongest examples of this are priest-restrictions. If a massive portion of the game is centered around terraforming and crafting, restricting that outright so broadly is maybe not a great idea.
I went over this in my priest-post, but let me summarize again: Having other people play the game for you isn't fun. If the game is about crafting and terraforming, I would really like to be doing that. There is probably nothing worth sacrificing that for.
If people just circumvent the restrictions with alts anyway, that entirely invalidates the point of restrictions. So, either do away with the restrictions, which will naturally discourage the necessity for alts in the first place, or alter the restrictions to not remove so much of what the game offers in whole, which would again naturally discourage the necessity for alts in the first place.
And like in the priest-post, the game already sets a precedent for this; being a follower gives you certain bonuses to crafts, but you can't pursue those crafts once you become a priest. Why not? Why not allow priests to continue practicing at least just those crafts? Why would Magranon not approve of me imp'ing a sword as a priest?

And then there's things like one deed per character per server, and well, people kind of like being able to have more than one settlement. A solution to that would be something like a sliding-cost-exponent. Maybe each additional settlement claim would cause all other claims to have 10% higher upkeep, and then 25%, then 40, then 70, etc etc.

There's a lot that can be brought up and said, any number of issues with any number of solutions, but the short of it is that alts probably can't be done away with until a major portion of the game is updated or redesigned, or better enables co-operation, etc.

    The conclusion: Unlike doing away with real-world trading and using exclusively silver being good for the game, doing away with alts and being exclusively a single character will probably only amplify existing problems with Wurm. This is a major hurdle, and every person's opinion on it will be different. Some people just don't find mining to be very engaging, so they put their miner up on another client while imp'ing and crafting and what-not on their main character. Other people will think that mining is just fine as-is and find no need to make an alt just for it.
We probably need many dialectical discussions to work together on a consensus for the solutions and overhauls necessary to facilitate being able to enjoy the game through a single character.
There's probably no ideal solutions for this either; an alt will always be the more appealing option to someone, but we can work to make other options far more appealing, or viable, or less troublesome, etc.



3.    I'm not necessarily saying that alts should be against the game's rules outright.
A number of games are totally cool with you having multiple characters, and may even rely on the profits of such through selling, or subscribing for, additional character slots, etc. But a lot generally agree on one thing; you shouldn't be playing multiple characters simultaneously. Because it does harm the game's health for a myriad of reasons.
Being able to be several people at once invalidates a lot of the design and implementation decisions that make games enjoyable at all. And Wurm suffers from this exact thing, a number of decisions were made based on the principle of a single character, and a bunch of other decisions have also been scuffed by considerations for simultaneous use of alts.
In general, the reason people make secondary characters is because they want to experience something different. Maybe that barbarian wants to know what its like to play the support role for once, or maybe the mage would rather be slinging musical notes rather than brilliant flames, etc.
In Wurm's case, and assuming simultaneous logging wasn't allowed, there aren't that many reasons to really make a secondary character at all. The only things you can differently experience are being a different priest, or a different meditation path.
And, maybe that is itself evidence that Wurm is fundamentally designed to be a single-character kind of game, right?

But should it be? Would the game be any worse if there was even more unique things to each character?
Let's use affinities as an example: Perhaps a single character can only attain affinities in 4 different skills. Suddenly, you have to be conscientious in what you specialize in, and choose carefully. This isn't something that locks the rest of the game from you, but makes pursuing certain skills less tedious or troublesome than others. And maybe you might think "I should make an alt just for harvesting! It'll have affinities in mining, woodcutting, farming, and fishing! And my main will have matching craft skills!".
But then consider that this is a decision everyone is making, and that there's so many different skills that if you wanted alts for the affinities of even half of all skills, the subscription prices would get very expensive very quickly. So what's the cheaper option? Well, just finding someone adept at a particular task of course!
You could even further crack down on the affinities with restrictions of their own, like only 1 gather affinity, craft affinity, combat affinity, and cooking affinity. Suddenly making an alt for every conceivable possibility is less appealing, just because there'd be a lot of unnecessary crossover. But this would mean there's always a demand in certain skills, a village of people who mostly enjoy shipbuilding will be far clingier to anyone with affinities in woodcutting and such, for example.
More directly, this would encourage players congregating to close proximity of each other for greatest possible variety of affinities in skills. Something that there's not really any incentive for since wagons and mailboxes are a thing.

There's a lot of interesting things that can be done with making each character even more unique from others, and this may make seeking others more appealing than making alts. But anything unique about a character is fundamentally invalidated by being able to play any number of characters simultaneously.

    The conclusion: I don't believe that being able to make more than one character should be against the rules, but I do believe that you shouldn't be able to play any number of them simultaneously.
Being able to, say, make one character per server, is totally reasonable to me. Having to pay a subscription per character is still just as reasonable too.

If it is the case that the staff would like to profit off people making multiple characters and paying several subscriptions at once, there should maybe be more things made inaccessible or non-viable for a single character.
And this is sort of contradictory, because it skirts a fine line: Wouldn't this just encourage alts even more? Yes. But then consider that this might be exactly why people aren't content to play as a single character and rely on others. If everyone brings to the table the same things, there's little interest or incentive in finding anyone in particular.
I suspect that, if there were more meditation paths, or priest-archtypes, or restrictions on total skill affinities, anything that is a unique branch or choice, it'd probably be less viable to make alts for all these things inaccessible to a single character, and instead directly encourage people to find others for particular niches, just by being the cheaper option.
This is another one of those things that would need a lot of dialectical discussion though, because everyone will have a difference of opinion, and maybe ultimately we'd prefer Wurm to stay as the game that offers nearly everything to a single character.



4.    All of the above should make it just a little more evident that alts are a really bad negative loop in the game's health and growth, and maybe you wouldn't have thought about it otherwise if not for that.
Perhaps you are reading this right now, thinking about it, and saying to yourself "I hadn't thought about it like that, but he might be right".
But, I'm not all-seeing-and-knowing. I don't really know how alts even affect things like the PVP servers, but I can't imagine it's any better on that side of the coin either. There's probably nothing nice about being jumped by 6 characters, all controlled by the same person.
And this is already my conclusion.

    The conclusion: We cannot individually foresee how alts affect the game in the grand scope of things, but we can unanimously agree or disagree that they are bad for the game, and work out how to fix it in an agreeable manner.
We need to seriously discuss and come to some overarching consensus of whether or not alts are truly worth doing something about, and while I believe they are worth being rid of, I fully accept that I can be wrong about this. I might be an outlier in my opinions and observations.
I could totally be wrong about everything I just said, for reasons that are maybe obvious or not so obvious at all.
So can you.
But, we can't get there unless we hold a forum of discussion about it and learn from each other.



So, there it is.
My suggestion; get rid of alts. Somehow.
I really truly hope this sparks discussion or thoughts on improving Wurm, and while I personally believe alts are the current worst aspect, maybe it's just a symptom of greater issues beyond my own insight.
You can expect to see another post like this next year, assuming I develop further thoughts on the subject. Or sooner, pending what this year's updates bring, maybe making the issues even worse or actually resolving any number of them.

Thank you.

Edited by Metallumere

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Not unanimous, and Alts matter 

Edited by Archaed

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The trouble is; wurm is designed around ALTs.  I'm not going to call it good design from the player's perspective (it's dire), but from a business perspective it's a subtle whale milking mechanic.

 

It's why priests are the way they are; they were designed to be ALTs, a second tier of premium in reality.

 

I definitely think shifting the game's core design away from "milk the alt whales" would be a good thing; but I also think that world peace is more likely!

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I'm not sure I agree with this, I can see your points but equally I don't think they represent every player in Wurm.

 

I have played for many years now, I did have alts back on Epic but only when I had the time and money to do so, I was a completionist, I enjoyed being able to do my own enchants and little sermon circles etc it didn't stop me from trading with other players on things I didn't yet have the skills to do myself. However now I'm on Freedom, I'm just playing my main character, I don't have the time to sink into alts but I do sell bulk services and normally end up spending a portion of that silver earned around various markets, I know others who have multiple alts - they still trade goods, visit markets etc. Look at how busy the trade channel and section of the forums are, I don't think alts are causing issues, just giving players more options.

 

As for new people joining Wurm, I think you have to accept Wurm is like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. Back on Epic there was some streamer joined and had about 50 of his followers join him and they built a deed and .... I don't know if they actually did anything else, but it fizzled out, I don't think any of them still play, or kept playing more than a couple of months.. if that. 

 

Priest restrictions are good, like Etherdrifter said it's like an extra layer of premium giving people more options and choices about how they want to play their game. If priests was easier the rest of the game wouldn't be able to keep up with them - can you imagine 40 Merlins raining down fireballs and ice pillars while swinging a huge sword through a Rift event? in all seriousness though, personally, I have no issue in paying silver to people who are willing to put the time and effort and coin into making shiny things, and I'm sure I'm not alone. 

 

So many players have put so much time, effort and money into their alts and are happy enough with Wurm life that they choose to continue to do so, I don't think any major changes would be fair on any of them.

 

In Conclusion: Wurm = Marmite, don't blame alts.

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2 hours ago, Archaed said:

Not unanimous, and Alts matter 

Woops, yeah I worded that poorly. Didn't mean to say that we do, just that we could. Fixed that a bit.
I don't suppose you could elaborate on that a little? I'm assuming you mean to say that multi-logging should continue to be condoned, I'd be interested in hearing why though.

 

 

1 hour ago, Etherdrifter said:

I also think that world peace is more likely!

I am inclined to agree. Man...
 

1 hour ago, Etherdrifter said:

wurm is designed around ALTs

See, this is the sort of thing where I step back and wonder "Is it really???". Because, I just can't tell. I mean, there's definitely been some considerations for them down the line of its grand design, but whether or not it started like that, and continues to aim for that, I'm not so sure. You might be right that priests were explicitly designed to encourage people to pay for a second character, that would explain why they are so gimped from core gameplay loops anyway.
And I guess that still doesn't answer the question of; should that be the case? If Wurm is fundamentally designed around usage of alts, should it continue to be, should the usage of alts be enhanced and expanded upon even?

Even if it is or was a business design decision, wouldn't the circulation of silver be a better design investment overall? I would think that the more people have to rely on each other, the more silver moves, the more gets removed, the more gets bought, etc.
That's sort of where I'm lost on this. If there was an opportunity to be paying someone for resources or labor, that's a missed opportunity to have two subscriptions being paid for, and have silver moving. Alts get the subscriptions, sure, but they don't inherently move more silver.
Having more of your own manpower and labor would more or less equate to less time investments made overall. The quicker you, as a singular person, can construct a castle, that's less time you're paying for any subscriptions long-term. Do 3 extra subscriptions really outweigh the cost-benefits?
Let's examine that:
People are kind of unreliable, right? Let's say alts were abolished, and now one of the more common transactions made are contracted builders, paid to just help slap down some planks or bricks or what-not. Time schedules don't exactly sync up all that great, maybe permissions are set wrong, traveling to and from takes a while, someone runs off with someone else's tools without realizing, there's any number of things that could cause a delay in the process, right?
These delays, from human incompetence more or less, are profitable, as its more time that a subscription will be needed.
Contrast that to a similar situation where its just one person with three alts, and they'll more or less do the process as flawlessly as they desire. Minimal delays, minimal setbacks, minimal subscription time needed.

And again, this isn't even considering the cost-benefits of people just needing more people in their lives, and reaching out or pursuing that. Alts don't necessitate that, at all. Nobody using an alt is trying to drag their friends into things by necessity, or constantly reaching out for someone who is in turn probably also reaching out for others. And necessity, as we may all know, is very profitable.

 

 

35 minutes ago, Luniraen said:

some streamer joined and had about 50 of his followers join him and they built a deed and .... I don't know if they actually did anything else, but it fizzled out, I don't think any of them still play

I mean, that's pretty much par for the course for anything a streamer convinces masses to join in on. But even then, there were at least some people previously entirely unaware of Wurm before then, that will remember it or spread their knowledge of it around, convincing more people to check it out in the grand scheme of things.

 

35 minutes ago, Luniraen said:

So many players have put so much time, effort and money into their alts and are happy enough with Wurm life that they choose to continue to do so, I don't think any major changes would be fair on any of them.

The same was said about accounts people invested in specifically to buy and sell. The only thing fair was that they still had those accounts by the time purchasing them was outlawed, and plenty of forwards warning(I think?) to actually sell off whatever they still wanted to sell.
In this case, I don't think getting rid of alts is such a full-stop solution. I'm inclined to agree that it would be unfair for people who invested in them, but that doesn't mean something couldn't be done for them. A solution would even be something like asking for your xp totals to be combined onto a chosen account. Having 2 level 50 woodcutters wouldn't suddenly make your chosen character level 100, but probably more like... 65? The orders of magnitude for how xp works is funny like that, ya know? And more likely than not, there'd only be a select range of skills being moved, like mining and woodcutting and stonecutting and such. Although I know there's certainly some mad lads out there with like 20 different characters with near-max levels of everything, just for the style points.
But, the point is, of course something should be done to make all things fair and agreeable.

You do bring up some valid points though, Luniraen. Thank you for those anecdotes. I too wouldn't want to see literally everyone running around turning rifts turning it into ice and fire and mushrooms. It's why I personally think the most effective solution is to probably just do a pass over on the restrictions, just sensibility(Fo's can dig, but Libila's can't???), and allowing them their follower crafts.
I do however know that, with how priest restrictions are actually coded, this is a surprising amount of work, since the restriction is on the action type, and not the skill type. There is no action type for just imp'ing a sword, for example. But, maybe decompiled Unlimited code isn't the best thing to go by, there might be room for hooks into how actions are performed that would easily allow for such.
 

35 minutes ago, Luniraen said:

In Conclusion: Wurm = Marmite, don't blame alts.

I will reflect on this wisdom.
But, ya know, unlike Marmite we can actually do something here. I hope we can, anyway. There's not a lot of people who can atomically reconstitute Marmite into delicious Gray Poupon or such, but nebulous reprogramming of stuff is about as close as one can get to atomically reconstituting one thing into another.
What I'm saying is, Wurm doesn't have to be Marmite, it could be royal jelly, it could be anything. What it is isn't always what it will be. We need only discuss the change we want to see, and affect it. It's why I was so happy to see Unlimited become a thing, having the power to affect change to it directly was so lovely. And well, that's been left behind. So now we only have a voice in what Online can be, we need only speak.

Edited by Metallumere

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If I couldn't multi-log I'd either be on my way out, or massively shrinking my in-game holdings.

While I can understand your feelings, I don't agree with them. I am quite happy with simulating a village with alts.

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i think an account system with multiple character slots would be the more sensible solution and also be more in tune with what people are used to when playing MMO's. They probably are not keen on that since they perceive it as a possible loss in premium income but i think it would retain more people.

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Ok, so honestly, it's too early in the morning to read that entire manifesto, and I don't really play with more than 2 toons at a time, but leave my alts alone. I regularly engage in the economy, buying imps for weapons, armour, tools, etc. and also buying bulk goods. Getting rid of alts would mean what, I'd have to source 20K bricks from 20 different people instead of one who makes them with 4-5 alts? No thanks!

 

Also, If there weren't people with priest alts, how would you summon people to various events? Are you saying that one would have to rely on multiple players for things like a summons back to your village after a rift? Because that'd be a problem as some people don't play as regularly as others, are in different time-zones, etc. So, you would force people to slog thru the vast stretches of Xanadu to and from rifts and slayings and imp-alongs because they couldn't find a priest near their village to get them back home? That's ridiculous.

 

Bottom line: I am fully against your proposal for many reasons, too many to fully articulate, and really, don't feel like you have to reply, your verbosity is tedious.

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I can see this as a multi-layered issue and while I do see some of the issues you are pointing out, there are other aspects that people choose to focus on which makes their use of alts perfectly acceptable to their game play.

 

I am one that has had a single character the whole time I've been playing.  I honestly couldn't understand how or why people would want to have multiple characters, and it seemed to me to make the game that much more complicated.  However, this does go to how someone wants to play/enjoy the game.  As Hvergi points out...some people like playing on their own, supplying their village and having various characters to build different skills with.  Yes, it can seem to be "unfair" to a certain point, if someone is using an alt to mine while working on other things; HOWEVER why does that provide an issue to other players??  This discussion can go on and on, and I get it.  I just wanted to say, yes I understand the basis for the comments, although at the end of the day, what does it really matter to everyone else in general?

 

My main issue with alts has been (and probably always will be!) when it comes to unique hunts.  People bring their 10 alts to get more blood/scale, which in the end reduces what everyone gets, since as I understand it, there is xx amount per creature (scale/hide, not blood!) which is divided amongst everyone in local.  So, if there are 250, people get less per character because of the excess of alts.  Honestly, though, that is a minor issue.  At the end of the day...who cares??  Money goes into supporting alts, as they have to be premium to gain a lot of these benefits, and if someone wants to spend $$$$ like that, sure, whatever.

 

It would be nice if people were more cooperative in play, so alts aren't as necessary, as I caught as part of your point.  Xan will really not allow that, with the current player base.  I mean, I don't mind helping people out, but the alliance I'm part of is all the wayyyyyyyy up north and I'm all the wayyyyyyy down south.  Travel time alone isn't workable.  Other servers, it's much easier to run across the continent to help out.  We all have different time zones, amounts of time to play, interests....those of us that can connect and play together, we do.  One reason I like attending impalongs.  I was soooo hesitant to do that in the beginning, but as my skill set grew, it just made sense to start to help others out where I could.  We get together, we play silly games, we get things imped or enchanted, we go home.  I

 

I definitely like the PvE aspect....BUT I HATE THE PVP AND IT FRUSTRATES ME THAT PEOPLE PLAY THAT WAY!!  While most people enjoy the cooperative play, there are those that, well, don't.  I still can't believe someone stole my supreme chisel, rare rake, rare rope tool, golden scythe and teddy bear FROM MY (supposedly locked) TENT when I was out rifting/exploring!!  I mean....seriously???  The attitude is out there of "if I can take it, I will!"  That alone leaves many people very hesitant to open up to "strangers" when asking for help or needing a service.  If someone has put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their deed/game play in general, I absolutely understand the thinking that making alts is much more secure and in general safer.

 

Yes, this topic can continue on and on...those were just a couple points that I've been thinking about and have thought about since I started playing. 

 

That said, I am going to be making my first alt, and here's why....I want to deed a piece of land, but I don't want to leave the deed/community I'm already a part of.  I just want to have a piece of land that I can work, that isn't attached to what is already existing, and know that other people aren't going to mess with it (points to full paragraph above).  I absolutely don't mind sharing, and my "deed" has been open up to this point for others to use if needed.  I'm just over the idea of some taking advantage and want to protect this pet project I want to have.  Again, I don't have unlimited time and I won't be playing that one much...I love my main and have worked hard with it.  This alt is a potential for moving into priest skills, which will be different than existing priests in my community.  I just need a "place holder" for deeding and that's about it.

 

Everyone game plays differently, so unfortunately, I don't see this being a prospect that will ever realistically happen.  Some enjoy the challenge of multiple toons, some don't. 

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I personally do not agree with removing alts and not for any of the reasons listed above, i am one of those people that prefer to play diffferent charactors with different skillsets in roleplay and have been that way in every single game i have ever played. games that deny me this ability usually see me leaving them right quick. this has nothing to do really with trying to get around game mechanics or trying to do everything by myself it has everything to do with who i feel like being on a given day. take that away from me and i will not support the game anymore with the hundreds of dollars i sink into it monthly

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11 hours ago, Metallumere said:

My suggestion; get rid of alts. Somehow.

So OP's goal is to get rid of alts.

 

OP was giving a lot of reasons about why alts should be limited in wurm.

 

However in the current gaming industry, especially game like crafting, bulk making game. Can't really prevent people to make alts to multiply the items in the same amount of time.

 

So the focus should be on how to get rid of alts, instead of why should get rid of alts

 

Wurm has quite amount of people know computer stuff, they know how to bypass the limitation of creating more than one character. 

 

Maybe don't need to know computer stuff, simply ask ur friends who don't play wurm, and use their identity to create characters. For now.

 

Pretty much its impossible for the wurm team to know who is controlling the characters behind the Internet. For now.

 

May be even hire a person in real life to make bulks. Well, the person doesn't count as alt because the person has an identity. But they act like an alt.

 

Theory turn into practice. That's the time to see what improvements to add. Actually on NFI, a community recruit one character per person on deed, meaning no alts. They have a similar mind set to OP. An example for OP to observe human behavior in wurm with no alts. 

 

7 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

The trouble is; wurm is designed around ALTs.

They have to adapt the environment of gaming. Alts are everywhere. That's the fun part of the Internet🤭. Be creative.
 

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1 hour ago, Coach said:

They have to adapt the environment of gaming. Alts are everywhere. That's the fun part of the Internet🤭. Be creative.

 

My issue isn't that ALTs exist, and that people use them.

 

It's that the game's design has been stunted to use ALTs to milk extra money.

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If someone wants to pay $80/month to make bricks faster, let them. Killing off the usefulness of alts isn't going to bring more players to the game, only increase the prices of items due to lower supply.

 

This coming from a player that doesn't use alts (including priests)

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Reduce timers and change priests to punish combat not skilling

Easy

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5 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

Getting rid of alts would mean what, I'd have to source 20K bricks from 20 different people instead of one who makes them with 4-5 alts?

You're not considering the strong possibility that the way people operate and play would fundamentally change without alts, not to mention major quality of life changes that would be put into effect.
Things like:
People now being in closer proximity to each other by necessity would theoretically reduce the difficulty of finding people, and it'd of course be more all the more profitable for services to spring up that reduce the exact tedium of having to find that many people, so there would be far more sources of bulk goods.
Ease of production of the more time-consuming bulk goods, perhaps through some sort of sermon-esque group-crafting system.
 

5 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

So, you would force people to slog thru the vast stretches of Xanadu to and from rifts and slayings and imp-alongs because they couldn't find a priest near their village to get them back home? That's ridiculous.

Is that not just a symptom of poor design though? Like, I don't get that, if you can acknowledge that the game would be functionally poorer without alts, why not push for those functions to be better regardless of alts existing? Why not suggest something like rifts giving you another free village teleport or something, right? Or wagoneers functioning as transport to automatically get to imp-a-longs and such.
Like, there's very obviously room for improvement in innumerable ways, and through things that already exist to maybe suit our needs given just a bit more fiddling.
 

5 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

don't feel like you have to reply, your verbosity is tedious.

I mean, if there was a simpler way to express it, I would. But there isn't. It's a complex issue, and I'll try to encompass every facet of it that I can, because I want to see things be better.
I guess I can try to sum up the above quote-replies?
Reply 1: The game would change.
Reply 2: The game should change.

 

 

5 hours ago, Jingerjas said:

At the end of the day...who cares??

I guess that's not unfair, but that may be ignoring the possibility of it being bad for the game's health long-term, ya know? I guess it's lasted this long relatively fine, but I can't help but suspect it would be flourishing all the more if alts just weren't poking holes in it.
 

5 hours ago, Jingerjas said:

Travel time alone isn't workable.

Similarly to Dale's concerns, that's probably an indication that the game is mechanically lacking something that needs to be resolved.

 

6 hours ago, Jingerjas said:

I just need a "place holder" for deeding and that's about it.

That's valid, but would you prefer to just be able to stake multiple deeds in the first place, and regardless of whether you are already part of a settlement or not?
A lot of the sentiment about alts is something like "I can't do thing without alts". But, why not just push for those things to work better without them in the first place, ya know?
This is insightful though, thank you.

 

 

5 hours ago, kordethbludscythe said:

i am one of those people that prefer to play diffferent charactors with different skillsets in roleplay

Does that include simultaneously logging onto all or most of your characters at once? 'Cause, I did say in the post that I am not explicitly asking for alts to be against the game's rules, having multiple characters is fine and should honestly be better supported entirely, but being able to log onto all of them at the same time is what I find to be problematic.
See conclusion 3.

 

 

5 hours ago, Coach said:

Pretty much its impossible for the wurm team to know who is controlling the characters behind the Internet. For now.

This is a very valid consideration. Even if alts were explicitly against the game rules, policing that would be quite problematic, yeah. There'd probably be innocent people punished unfairly, and others who get away with things for a long time.
I guess that'd just be a question of "Is it worth it?". I would think so, especially since policing real-world transactions is even more difficult in theory, but if staff have some method for that, they can possibly work out cracking down on alts.
 

5 hours ago, Coach said:

Actually on NFI, a community recruit one character per person on deed, meaning no alts.

When NFI was released, I recruited for a no-alt settlement. It was... insightful, but my leadership skills are pathetic, and I began to strongly question human behavior in general from what I observed. And then my net died for like 5 months and everyone just kinda left.
Then I joined the only other settlement I found that had a no-alts rule, you might be talking about that one. It was interesting, for sure. Had a curious dynamic going on with people coming and going sometimes, and others sticking around for quite a while putting in a surprising amount of work. There's like a graveyard of houses belonging to all the people who built and then just never came back, it's kind of beautiful in a way, the mayor could have torn that stuff down but I'm glad he didn't.


 

3 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

the game's design has been stunted to use ALTs

I am strongly inclined to agree with this sentiment.

 

 

2 hours ago, Kellen said:

Killing off the usefulness of alts isn't going to bring more players to the game, only increase the prices of items due to lower supply.

Would that not encourage people to join and stick around? Like, if it's suddenly more profitable to craft anything, I'd imagine more people would come around just to capitalize on things. Supply and demand is weird like that, you'd think lower supply means lower interest and incentive, but that's not necessarily the case.
I certainly recall the vested interest when the Steam servers first launched and there was a low supply of everything, labor for nearly anything was quite profitable. I think I made 15 silver just chopping a forest for someone. Good times. That sort of profit and ease of profiting was what appealed to a lot of people, and no doubt a good many just sort of left after prices stabilized and supply of things was plentiful.

 

 

2 hours ago, Yggdrasil said:

Reduce timers and change priests to punish combat not skilling

Huh. You know, that might be agreeable. Combat isn't exactly all that core to the game, but maybe if the exploration update changes that and makes things a little more dangerous and exciting, I could see a change like this being very potent.



Thank you all for the replies thus far.

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24 minutes ago, Metallumere said:

People now being in closer proximity to each other by necessity

I don't want to live next to a bunch of other people in order to play the game.  You, like so many others that suggest things like this, assume that we all desperately want to live right next to each other, like in some dystopian hive. Sounds like the opening days of NFI, when deeds were being put down right next to each other and then all hell broke loose as people couldn't agree on where to place highways, what trees should be cut, all kinds of petty disputes. Seriously? that's your ideal future of Wurm? C'mon man be real.

 

Most players don't want to have perimeter disputes with their neighbors all the time. Quite a few, like me, have decided to move way out into the boonies so I don't have to have more than 1 person in my local in any given week or month. But no, you want me to move back next to a starter town where there's no room to shape my surrounding environment, because there's just too many deeds squeezed into a small space.

 

At the end of the day, what you're suggesting is a complete tear-down and rebuild of Wurm in it's entirety. Would be so much easier for you to go hire a team of devs and build your own game from scratch.

 

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I have a bunch of alts. Real quite a bunch. Those I would have no issues to get rid of if a reasonable alternative solution for what they exist for would be in place.

But.

I have 3 toons which are all kinda mains. I feel they are different entities and they are existing individually and on their own right. Yes, two are priests as they have emerged from the regular "priest alt" category. There are times when they are quite living apart from each other on distant servers / deeds doing their own things.

All I wanted to say is that is not that simple to draw the lines.

Edited by Jaz
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1 hour ago, Metallumere said:
3 hours ago, Kellen said:

If someone wants to pay $80/month to make bricks faster, let them. Killing off the usefulness of alts isn't going to bring more players to the game, only increase the prices of items due to lower supply.

 

This coming from a player that doesn't use alts (including priests)

 

Would that not encourage people to join and stick around? Like, if it's suddenly more profitable to craft anything, I'd imagine more people would come around just to capitalize on things. Supply and demand is weird like that, you'd think lower supply means lower interest and incentive, but that's not necessarily the case.
I certainly recall the vested interest when the Steam servers first launched and there was a low supply of everything, labor for nearly anything was quite profitable. I think I made 15 silver just chopping a forest for someone. Good times. That sort of profit and ease of profiting was what appealed to a lot of people, and no doubt a good many just sort of left after prices stabilized and supply of things was plentiful.

 

 

Why would driving the cost of materials up cause more people to come to the game? Not like Wurm is going to start advertising that people should play because in-game materials are higher priced. You have to get people to even install the game before the price of materials matters at all.

 

I can tell you that within the first 6 months of Harmony being opened we sold a crap ton of bulk materials (17,000 planks, 12,000 mortar, 9,000 small nails, 8,000 large nails, 7,000 shafts, 5,600 mortar, 3,000 pottery bricks, etc) . The materials being higher priced in no way made it any less miserable to do and it burned 5 of the 6 of us out to where they no longer play to this day.

 

I can tell you if I logged into a game after installing it for the first time and saw that it cost $10 for 1,000 Slate Bricks I would immediately uninstall the game.

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3 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

all hell broke loose as people couldn't agree on where to place highways, what trees should be cut, all kinds of petty disputes.

A very valid point.
The whole thing was strange to me really. I fully expected there to remain only one server too. I didn't in the slightest expect the widespread chaos that happened, the disputes, and especially the pettiness.
I mean hell, I went around a mountain with someone prospecting for silver for some statuettes, we find a spot that looks good, set our tents down, and check out a mine someone else opened with no indication of a settlement or claim or anything nearby.
All of a sudden, like 2 dudes show up and go "Bruh, you griefed our mine, why???".
Apparently he had a door on that mine, and thought we bashed it since our tents were nearby.
There were several other incidents that came about from this mining trip too, someone else set us to kill on sight when we thought their seemingly public mine, with like 6 gold veins and 4 silver, was for whoever needed some. Turns out, no, they barely had anything to say about it other than "You're kill on sight, leave".

I honestly never understood, and still don't, the distinct lack of co-operation or straight up paranoia people have. I get that in the rush for profits it's agitating to have to deal with setbacks, but beyond the scope of stuffing pockets full of silver, what was there to worry about?
Maybe you're right though, I might be entirely misunderstanding and thinking the game(or life in general, I guess) is about working together and getting along, maybe it's just not? In which case, my bad.
 

3 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

what you're suggesting is a complete tear-down and rebuild of Wurm in it's entirety

...yeah, mostly. Is that a bad idea? Are systems, implementations, and code from roughly 15 years ago really worth doing nothing about? Should we not plot a course for where we want to go with things, isolate the grandest standing issues, discuss them, and ultimately push for the change we want to see?

 

 

2 hours ago, Kellen said:

The materials being higher priced in no way made it any less miserable to do and it burned 5 of the 6 of us out to where they no longer play to this day.

Does that not indicate that the process of creating bulk materials is inherently flawed then? If it was, or still is so miserable, why not push for change?
I mean, I know if it was less miserable, then it'd probably also be cheaper, but even that would naturally reduce the necessity for alts still.

3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

Ease of production of the more time-consuming bulk goods, perhaps through some sort of sermon-esque group-crafting system.

Like that, or something, ya know?

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10 minutes ago, Metallumere said:

I might be entirely misunderstanding and thinking the game(or life in general, I guess) is about working together and getting along

Ideally, sure, but this isn't an ideal game or world, and people are by nature, greedy, and increasingly so. You mentioned above yourself that a motivating factor for people to play this new way you're proposing is because prices would be higher, and you touted you being able to make crap tons of money on NFI when it opened.

 

You've also been a part of, by your count, 2 "no-alts" communities, which have died. Those experiences alone should tell you that this game does not fit that play-mode.

 

As for your rather glib remark that it's not a bad idea to tear this game to the floor and rebuild it, I don't want to stop playing this game while our very small dev team tries to remake it. I'd rather play this game, as is, warts and all, with our occasional updates and new content. If you'd rather play a game that has "no-alts" I'd like to invite you to go find that game. Feel free to report back when you do, and if it's a true sandbox, that's even close to the depth of this game, you may get some people to follow you there. Until then, I'd respectfully ask that you sit down and play.

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1 hour ago, DaletheGood said:

you touted you being able to make crap tons of money on NFI when it opened

Yup. Part of my settlement's agreement, as mayor, was that any citizen who wanted their subscription paid for only needed to ask. To my surprise, only like 3(Checked my old administration notes, it was 5 actually!) 5 out of 20 actually asked. I didn't want silver for me, I wanted people to be able to just enjoy the game.
I did not violate that agreement, but I did end up with an unexpected excess that's... still sitting in my bank actually. I really don't know what to do with that silver honestly. It would have gone towards expanding the claim, had all things worked out.
I even had written a contingency as part of the agreement; if the settlement were to ever disband, all assets would be liquidated and anyone who wanted what remained could have a split.
Nobody even wanted a share of what was left, it was just done and over...
I lament it, really.
 

1 hour ago, DaletheGood said:

Those experiences alone should tell you that this game does not fit that play-mode.

Yeah, it does, beyond all doubt at this point. I was considering a third last-hurrah, but I've been convinced for a while now that you're right.
If even paying people to play without alts didn't work too well, I'm not sure what would. This really might just be a lost-cause.

 

1 hour ago, DaletheGood said:

I'd rather play this game, as is, warts and all

It's certainly better than no game at all, yeah. Well, thanks for your feedback~

Edited by Metallumere

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7 hours ago, Metallumere said:

if staff have some method for that, they can possibly work out cracking down on alts.

Even if alts were explicitly against the game rules, policing that would be quite problematic, yeah.

There'd probably be innocent people punished unfairly, and others who get away with things for a long time.

Do they have the method for now? How many resources to build and maintain a perfect method? What is the possibility to crack down on alts successfully? 

 

Common sense told us staff don't have a cost-effective, easy to use, accurate method for spotting the alts without punish the innocent people accidentally, so they can't possibly work out cracking down on alts.

 

Then its a smart way to create a game which allow alts. Because how to spot alts accurately is more problematic than the creation of the game.

 

7 hours ago, Metallumere said:

When NFI was released, I recruited for a no-alt settlement. And then my net died for like 5 months and everyone just kinda left.

On 4/16/2022 at 12:26 PM, Metallumere said:

I figure it's once again worth sparking discussion into one of the worst aspects Wurm currently and continues to suffer from: Alts.

I figure worth sparking discussion into one of the worst aspects Wurm currently and continues to suffer from: Player who suffer from net died no matter how long it is.

1. It is my belief, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that players suffer from net died(net problem from the player side) have been and continue to be the absolute worst aspect of Wurm's health......


How can we maintain a stable connection when we want to communicate with each other?

 

7 hours ago, Metallumere said:

Then I joined the only other settlement I found that had a no-alts rule, you might be talking about that one. It was interesting, for sure. Had a curious dynamic going on with people coming and going sometimes, and others sticking around for quite a while putting in a surprising amount of work. There's like a graveyard of houses belonging to all the people who built and then just never came back, it's kind of beautiful in a way, the mayor could have torn that stuff down but I'm glad he didn't.

Are u trying to say no alts rule are good for short-term playing style but not good for long-term playing style?


From ur experience on the deeds, how does it benefit the wurm's health?
 

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Just a thought about "net died for x months". I do not know where the poster lives. Here, if my net dies, and I even have no mobile internet at hand, I can go to an internet cafe, pay a small fee for an hour of access or less, plug my USB stick in (let it scan for viruses before connecting), start my WO. Usually, internet cafes in my area have stronger boxes than me at home as kids use to play on.

Even internet in trains allows to play WO if you have a notebook able to run it.

 

I have a relatively small deed without non alt citizens, but I care for one year upkeep in advance. A fellow ally was kicked off net due to bad circumstances, but managed to inform the alliance leader about a longer absence. We are keeping his deed up til he returns (ok I use some of his fields for farming while paying the "rent" :) ) . Taking care for contingency is part of Wurm life.

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2 hours ago, Coach said:

What is the possibility to crack down on alts successfully? 

Well, unlike cracking down on real-world trading being very uhhh, under the table and hard to track in general, figuring out if someone is simultaneously logged onto more than one character for long periods of time is probably very viable.
I mean, you can spoof IP addresses and MAC addresses and what-not I'm sure, and that stuff is quite outside my understanding really, but I'd guess there's some sophisticated ways to catch hardware combination signatures and check those for anyone doing funny stuff.
Ultimately, someone with a spare laptop will probably always get away with using an alt no matter the rules and monitoring, and that'd be for the better since you wouldn't want people in the same house getting punished just for playing at the same time as you.
 

2 hours ago, Coach said:

Player who suffer from net died no matter how long it is.

I like your satire.
That was back in 2020, there was a busted ethernet cable running through the ground to this building, took quite a while to convince someone to go and fix it. It's like it was just the upload parts of the cable that were broken, which was very strange. I don't know much about that stuff though.

The real mistake I made; I didn't write any contingencies for my being absent from the settlement for any reason. I kind of scrambled to put some other folks in charge, but that created some problems too.

Ultimately, my settlement didn't get to die from being no-alts-only, it died from my own incompetence. So, I really don't know what would have happened were I just a little better at managing people and also didn't suffer from a busted cable.
It's inconclusive.
But, while it was going, it did seem to be a moderate success. The systems I put in place were flawed in some ways, in retrospect, I think I even wrote up a post-mortem investigation into what I could have done better(which isn't published anywhere), but you can check out the recruitment post here if you'd be curious as to how it worked.
My aims for it were simple enough; establish a self-sustaining and self-regulating system that theoretically could work just fine in my absence if given enough time to be built up, construct tenets and policies that were agreeable and would directly benefit citizens and alliance members, and more importantly provide incentive to work together towards common causes.
I guess I could share some of the notes I wrote into what went wrong:

  • Although the mayor being the single point of failure makes for a secure system, it's not worth the risk of instability(especially when your net dies for several months).
  • Although keeping deed size minimal to afford premium payments may seem like a good practice, it'd not only be cheaper but also probably make everyone happier to just invest in a large claim and allow people to build whatever within a designated space. Additionally, paying peoples' premiums really only works as an initial investment. Once someone has premium, it's very likely that they can sustain it further alone.
  • People will not necessarily listen to priority-task-orders when the game is fundamentally about doing whatever you want to be doing.
  • The warehouse never saw the light of day, and even then was based on a flawed idea of hierarchy. The idea of restricting bulks and higher quality materials to trustworthy/higher ranking members seemed like a good solution on paper, but in actuality there's not enough range between the access levels to warrant this.
  • Members will possibly cause other members grief, neighbors will possibly cause us grief, neither of which I expected in the slightest.
  • People parting to pursue their own ambitions outside the guild will possibly need better incentive.

That last one probably sounds weird, but I think I did originally envision the settlement as being a spring-board for people to build themselves up and inevitably go out into the world to pursue their own ambitions. Ambition was the most respected tenet we had. I think that was even a sort of ace-in-the-hole in-case Wurm really didn't improve and alts were perceived as being just as necessary still, or worse.
I honestly expected more things to be happening with the flood of Steam profits that came in, putting that into effect has been much slower than I expected.
There's some other stuff in those notes, but eh, that stuff doesn't really matter in the context here.
Lessons were learned, some lessons are still being learned.
 

2 hours ago, Coach said:

Are u trying to say no alts rule are good for short-term playing style but not good for long-term playing style?

That's a difficult question, I'm not exactly a no-alts expert or anything, but uhhh, I guess I can try to conclusively provide an answer.

The short of my conclusion is; I suspect it might only work long-term, but neither settlement has survived long enough to work out how and have the systems put in place really mature and fit just right.

Both of these no-alt settlements(My own, and another which I'll preserve the privacy of), in my opinion, both suffered the same demise; mismanagement.
While both settlements had the explicit rule of no-alts-allowed, there were a lot of peculiar discrepancies brought up to justify that rule being broken for certain circumstances. There were also people who just straight up broke the rule because they didn't care really.

One example I could cite is that I had some citizens in my deed who wanted to found a secondary-claim that was used only for a massive field of crops off-deed some distance away. And, well, you can't stake a deed while you're part of one, so they asked
"Hey, is this a good enough reason to break the no-alt rule?".
I told them, no, absolutely under no circumstances should this rule be broken. I couldn't in good faith allow any exceptions to the rule.
So, they left my settlement, founded the farm, and I just gave them individual permissions as-if they were a citizen still.
This... caused other problems though; they weren't getting the faith bonuses and such, then some citizens wanted to go and tend to the farm themselves, and they didn't have permissions, and worse they wanted to harvest stuff against the wishes of those who had built it. This caused a myriad of problems, and it got really messy, and there was no precedent for what was happening and nothing was written in the existing policies, guidelines, or tenets to handle it. The only ruling I could invoke was "They outrank you- (They were priests, and effectively outranked everyone by necessity) listen to what they say."
And, expectedly, this didn't resolve anything and everything continued to be a mess.

The other settlement I joined was interesting though, because unlike mine which stood its ground and said "No alts for any reason ever", this one made exceptions to the rule down the line. I think that played a part in quickening its demise, but I couldn't say for certain.
I did have some influence here, I voiced my opinion that no exceptions should be made to the rule, it being something you can't really go back on down the line, but ultimately exceptions were made by the only person running the place, and alts were then a thing. That's the sort of thing I mean when I say "mismanagement".
And, well, one exception led to another, and before you knew it the settlement was in this weird half-state where alts were kinda okay but also kinda not but also its kinda Wurm's fault for being designed and limited like that but also people are lazy and yadda yadda yadda. There was a lot of valid things to justify it, in other words, but I think setting a precedent with a single exception is what really broke the structure of it. There were some people who left because of these changes and exceptions, I stuck around just to see what would happen.
The settlement did suffer from a few other particular issues, but it's probably not too important to the no-alt context here.

Both of these settlements did have some things in common, but in particular they were both devised, administrated, and run by a single person, and that was the one who founded them.
And, well, when the only person running the show slips up, the whole thing falls apart at the seams. There was a possibility in both cases that the citizens would have taken the initiative and started keeping themselves up, but that didn't happen in either case really, and that sort of makes sense. After all, if someone had the initiative to run a settlement, they'd go found their own. And some did actually.
Would these settlements have died were better systems put in place for everyone to run the show? It's hard to say.

So, in conclusion, I think someone wanting to found a no-alt settlement would need a lot more time than expected to figure out how to make no-alts actually enjoyable with the game as it currently is, and account for anything that may happen or change later.
I've certainly been pondering it since mine disbanded, I still don't know how best to go about it.
 

2 hours ago, Coach said:

From ur experience on the deeds, how does it benefit the wurm's health?

That's a very good question.
Trying to make do with no-alts made issues with Wurm's design and limitations all the more obvious, of which it could be argued that a majority of these issues have not been solved because people just make alts and worry about it far less.
Let's pretend for a moment that there was no conceivable way to make a second account and as such no way to have a second character:
Could you imagine how many people would be asking for the ability to found more than one settlement, or found a claim as citizen of another settlement? Or maybe ask that all buildings naturally have some kind of perimeter built into them as an alternative? Or have un-deeded buildings have optional upkeep to prevent decay? Etc etc.
There would be words had. Innumerable suggestions made to have the game be objectively better in a good many ways. But instead, people just quietly shy away with an alt and make no fuss.
That's the thing I see harming its health the most, that people will see and acknowledge real tangible issues and limitations that could be fixed or changed in some way, but voice nothing.

My experience with a no-alt settlement was that discussion was had. It was argued what could or should be done, what might happen, how we'd personally go about it, etc.
And discussion into making Wurm better is what is best for its health. I consider alts to be the grandest standing issue in the way of that discussion, because
and here, let me highlight this
if people circumvent a majority of the game's issues by making alts, how does anyone expect these issues to be resolved?


 

2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

A fellow ally was kicked off net due to bad circumstances, but managed to inform the alliance leader about a longer absence. We are keeping his deed up til he returns (ok I use some of his fields for farming while paying the "rent" :) ) . Taking care for contingency is part of Wurm life.

That's kind of you all to do that for him~
My settlement didn't run out of upkeep. It's just that so many problems were cropping up, and my inability to be there to provide direction or have someone provide direction in my absence was another proverbial hole in the boat. And that boat sank.
I thought my design was fairly sturdy and didn't really need me, but maybe not.
Like I said in some of my post-mortem notes above, there were lessons learned, and lessons still being learned.
There may come a day when I try to host a no-alt sanctuary again, but I really don't want to do it without working out a better approach. It might be years before then really. Wisdom comes slow, ya know?
The dude running his own no-alt settlement even offered me the mantle of running it in his absence, but I still can't help but feel I couldn't do any better, so I refused.

Mismanaging those people will sit on my mind probably indefinitely, an egregious error that might just haunt me forever.
I will try to learn all that I can, and do what I can, to make this an objectively better experience for people. That includes regular discussion into the subject, which is this.

Edited by Metallumere

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3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

Ultimately, someone with a spare laptop will probably always get away with using an alt no matter the rules and monitoring, and that'd be for the better since you wouldn't want people in the same house getting punished just for playing at the same time as you.

Ya, people are very creative to get away the rules and monitoring.
 

3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

Ultimately, my settlement didn't get to die from being no-alts-only

Ya, very possible.

There are people enjoy play wurm with no-alts one-person deed. But when comes to no-alts multiplayer deed, the recruiter need to make sure villagers have 100% no-alts mind set.

 

3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

"Hey, is this a good enough reason to break the no-alt rule?".

The first deed, ur citizens have 100% alts mind set.

3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

but ultimately exceptions were made by the only person running the place, and alts were then a thing.

The second deed, the mayor has 100% alts mind set.

 

Choose the people wisely. No-alts multiplayer deed is possible and can be enjoyable, with the people share the same interest. Just need to find the right people with 100% no-alt mind set. 

 

3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

Could you imagine how many people would be asking for the ability to found more than one settlement, or found a claim as citizen of another settlement? Or maybe ask that all buildings naturally have some kind of perimeter built into them as an alternative? Or have un-deeded buildings have optional upkeep to prevent decay? Etc etc.

That's the rules and restrictions of a game. And u clicked the agreement before u actually play wurm, u lost the control of carry out a no-alts restrictions on every players because the mechanic is controlled by the wurm team. But u can make suggestions.

 

3 hours ago, Metallumere said:

That's the thing I see harming its health the most, that people will see and acknowledge real tangible issues and limitations that could be fixed or changed in some way, but voice nothing.

Doubt that, the second deed mayor are talkative, the guy probably talk about the limitation of a character somewhere.

 

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