AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Factioning Up Your Alts, A Kind of Devil.

Does anyone else suspect OpenTheRift of being an alien or robot spent to spy on us homo sapiens? Your grasp of human nature is helluva different from mine, OTR.

Let's stay on topic please, which is alts in (opposing) factions being bad or not.

I suspect a law degree :mrgreen:

Hudson wrote:

Let's stay on topic please, which is alts in (opposing) factions being bad or not.

Hudson wrote:

Let's stay on topic please, which is alts in (opposing) factions being bad or not.

Well its not good, so bad is more or less the only option remaining.

In my experience, there is nothing positive to be gained by having alts in multiple factions. Most of the time, I tend to speak with one character, then the next, then the next in multiple, completely opposing factions, and curiously enough, they all have the same opinion and are being played by the same person. When you let that person make policy,it only gets worse until you have, where you once had multiple factions, a monopoly of several players who all possess alts in key factions. That's the extreme worst case scenario, and unfortunately, on servers without permadeath and restrictions on multi-faction membership, that's precisely what tends to happen quite a bit.

Metagaming information is really just the tip of the ice berg on how bad things can get.

So if I'm in faction A and faction B which are currently neutral, but then eventually become hostile to one another does that mean a character from one of (or both) of the factions have to suddenly step down/leave for ooc reasons?

Personally, I think that's preferable, yes. Not to leave or step down for OOC reasons, but to back off from one of the characters until the conflict is over. I've chosen to do that myself because I felt it was poor form to play both sides of an argument, especially if both characters were heavily involved with or up the chain of the faction.

I think it's even worse if you're leading a faction and then playing an alt in an enemy faction to keep things stirred up. Killing your "Main's" faction's PCs and such. I've seen it happen. There's just...something very uncool about it.

Strawberry Stallion wrote:

So if I'm in faction A and faction B which are currently neutral, but then eventually become hostile to one another does that mean a character from one of (or both) of the factions have to suddenly step down/leave for ooc reasons?

I have to agree with Jes. Yes, you should find a way to shelve one of the characters until the conflict is over.

Isn't that metagame in of itself?

It slipped my mind in previous posts but I have to bring it up if only to spark the conversation. I see countless posts of the potential harm metagame can do because people don't see their fellow players as having the capacity to remove the outside influence and play strictly on an IC notion. I get that fear, but it's been brought up in examples of extremes, such as high ranking officials of 2 different factions warring each other and having a conflicting interest. The only issue I could see here is the divide in time, which is offset by the tools available in both the forum and ingame with proper time management.

My notion is this, we have worst case scenarios of metagame, but what if all the information was readily available? What if everyone knew what the overarching political state was? Then any metagame that slipped through would be almost immediately caught by the fellow players because they knew what should and shouldn't be known at a given time. It would take a load off the DM team in having to source back problems as well as give people more information to work with (For example say a faction has an internal struggle they are working to resolve, the 10 faction members might be stumped but an outside opinion could lift the barrier they've encountered with a fresh point of view, allowing that group to again proceed unperturbed)

Additionally I don't think it's fair to punish other players for some supposed lack of ability. Many have mentioned they have had conflicting characters and it brought them solace to shelf or extract one of their characters from the equation. I believe that should be your right to make that decision for YOURSELF, but not for me and any other player who feels they can handle it.

Strawberry Stallion wrote:

Isn't that metagame in of itself?

You would not be the first to make that argument. So simple solution as was probably the OPs intent. Just don't make PCs in different factions if you aren't willing to make some OOC concessions.

I don't want ooc restrictions have to force me to alter my IC decisions if it's something my characters would do, though.

Strawberry Stallion wrote:

I don't want ooc restrictions have to force me to alter my IC decisions if it's something my characters would do, though.

Agreed fully. IC should be left IC, ooC left ooC. They should never happen together.

kalcibone wrote:

Strawberry Stallion wrote:

I don't want ooc restrictions have to force me to alter my IC decisions if it's something my characters would do, though.

Agreed fully. IC should be left IC, ooC left ooC. They should never happen together.

OOC has and will always trump IC, its just how it goes.

OpenTheRift wrote:

snip

In practise, you have this:

1. People assume OOCly they are 100% right about something and take that course, wether it is ICly sensible or not. Commentary along those lines is maybe two clicks away, in the "Improving Amia" forum, at the end of the criminal RP thread.

2. People play avatars.

3. People hate "losing" and go to excessive lengths to avoid it.

4. People on NWN PWs automatically assume a "new" character is lower level than them and inexperienced, and behave appropriately.

5. People play characters with serious OOC agendas and powerplay through them.

6. Some people are messed up in the head and really can't seperate between IC and OOC

7. "Ham". A very prominent case of TAB-keying folks here should be familiar with. I think I'm maybe one of four people who actually knew the guy's real name (It wasn't "Ham"; srsly...). Everyone else assumed it was the, never ICly so much as mentioned by his player, "Ham" moniker floating above his head and referred to him as it, ICly.

I can cite a case as recent as less than a week ago:
I had the dubious pleasure of banning someone elsewhere recently who referred to the typical treatment of monster races as "racist" and "nazi" OOCly and attempted to guilt several staff members of another server into letting their blatantly demonic tiefling suddenly be every commoner's best friend. Oh, we also caught them muling high level gear on to said tiefling to be able to gain an upper hand in the inevitable PvP encounters they'd previously been losing. I'm 100% positive Amia has similar cases. Every single NWN server does.

I can only imagine the damage that could have been done, had they been privy to sensitive information OOCly. Now, I'm envisioning this person on a server that lets you join multiple factions with alts and has no permadeath.

All things considered, I think yes, you should let some bad apples ruin it for everyone and slap a big, fat "Verboten" on having alts in every single faction, with multiple ones active in the same plot even.

I can understand issues if you are in opposing factions, but not ALL factions. Only way to stop that is to either have NO factions, or have a one character lock on all people.

Problems tendentially arise when:

-Someone makes a noticable effort to join literally every plot relevant faction there is, with a different character each time. (if you do it all with one character and take the superspy IC, as it should be, it's commendable; Why bother, though, when you can do it OOCly?

)
-Two characters of one player are so closely intwined in faction politics or even in the same faction, that it becomes impossible to plausibly explain how they could not know each other.
-A player is participating in the same plot with multiple characters who all, conspiciously, have the same overall agenda.

Curbing those three big indicators of crap about to hit the fan generally takes care of the worst excesses.

Ideally, you'd want to restructure factions into two tiers as well:

Core group- Closed, only membership in one per player
Event group/outer circle- Anyone can join for when folks need the numbers; in case of conflicts, pick a side and stick to it.

It really isn't necessary to argue about it, guys. Just police yourself. Some people are better at it than others. I'm senile so I am /aware/ that it is entirely possible for me to forget which character I learned something on, so I choose to take a more hardline approach and just not go there.

Blessings,
~Ana

I would say that it's best to just have one of your characters in only one faction. If you have all of your characters in factions, they cannot be depended upon for anything, and I would think more metagaming would be more likely to occur.

So my advise would be to keep it trim, and focus more on one or two characters.

Interesting topic.

1. I would restrict access to a faction I led due to too many alts. Nothing wrong with that-- but I also believe people gossip too much, just like Ninja. It would be a tough (and private) decision. (Thankfully I'm doing a great job of avoiding any faction leading for the near future...)

2. I've seen meta gaming all over Amia, both intentional and not. From DMs to players. From alts to people who create new characters in the same faction their last character was in, essentially picking up their RP and plots the same place they left off. I've even done it once or twice (on a small scale)! It's a good thing to act preemptively against. I am a trusting person, but I am on the side of caution.

3. I support all strategies suggested in this thread to avoid the meta gaming problems. It's like a PR law suit. It might seem silly to think your comment about a coworker's blouse could be sexual harassment, but better to not take the risk... The consequences truly are massive headaches and wastes of everyone's time.

4. I shamelessly believe myself to be someone who played two main characters for years and has never been even remotely close to a bad case of meta game. I accomplished this by making one a drow and one a Cordor/Kohlingen human who didn't like/was scared of drow. EASY! Obviously things have changed, but Samantha and Elvis have both been parts of major plots and even some of the same ones and yet almost no PC has met both of them and most DMs haven't DMed for both of them. Secret win for me! I recommend you all try something similar. An ingrained IC meta game defense mechanism. It's not foolproof but it helped!

BornToKill wrote:

-Literally everything you've posted-

This is generally why I don't allow people on the opposite side of the pond into the Living Guard. I've made the mistake of making exceptions and these people either end up not getting on at all or only getting on for events. I haven't had the meta gaming problem but I really don't want to take the risk personally.

That said, I have yet to actually exercise my right to refuse an applicant for OOC reasons, so I'll not go into any fictitious examples on my own part. I've been lucky in my brief time in charge.

I have been skimming over the topic and with the mention of alt characters I have yet to see something I sometimes wonder about.

All these alt forum accounts (same user, different name) and game accounts sometimes seems to me that the user is either trying to hide who they really play for reasons such as:
1. Their main is a controversial PC and they fear they would be metagamed or not included if they put focus into an alt.
2. Deliberate secondary account for malicious intent or to avoid being known.
3. And so forth.

As a faction leader I will admit something strikes the tone of doubt in my mind when I see an account made the same day as a notice post pops up from a PC who seems to be rather well travelled and already knowing much of the basic lore etc. I personally can not wrap my head around the idea of making more than one account for such reasons. Probably because I am relentlessly absent minded and would end up posting on the wrong account!

I've made a new account before only to get away from my alts. They clutter up my archive and my vault. I finally have my new account with only 3 characters in it, and I feel very relieved now.

Other players may indeed have other intentions behind making a new account.

Silkelock wrote:

All these alt forum accounts (same user, different name) and game accounts sometimes seems to me that the user is either trying to hide who they really play for reasons such as:
1. Their main is a controversial PC and they fear they would be metagamed or not included if they put focus into an alt.
2. Deliberate secondary account for malicious intent or to avoid being known.
3. And so forth.

As a faction leader I will admit something strikes the tone of doubt in my mind when I see an account made the same day as a notice post pops up from a PC who seems to be rather well travelled and already knowing much of the basic lore etc. I personally can not wrap my head around the idea of making more than one account for such reasons. Probably because I am relentlessly absent minded and would end up posting on the wrong account!

As someone with a million alt accounts, i figured I'd offer my reasons, at least:

1.) I amused by most of them. They're jokes, usually inside ones, and they generally just make me snicker every time I would type them in or see myself log in.

2.) For characters who have specific disguises that they spend a great deal of time and effort cultivating, and I don't want to just hand out for free that Y is actually the same as X without people doing the actual RP to find it out. I used to be incredibly open and trusting about information like that about my characters, because I expected that the vast majority would be able to not metagame. I was burned a billion times, and the few times I wasn't, legitimately trustworthy people tended to prefer not to know things like that OOC anyway. So it is both a courtesy to people who don't want to know OOC stuff like X character is actually the Spy Y, and metagame protection for that character. Plus, an excuse to come up with another funny name!

3.) Book keeping. Simply to help designate who is who with posting and PM management.

That devs have alternate accounts makes sense to me

Need to hide from the loving mob somehow!

Generally I approach new players as I did when I lead guilds in MMOs back in the day. I played a MMO long ago on a full out PvP server (believe it or not) where only three zones were safe places the rest was kill or be killed. Our guild was the number one at the time in earned points from PvP and recruitment was strict. Every applicant was screened and triple checked and evaluated in value. You had to play a desired class as a main, know your stuff and be able to offer something in a OOC value.
Because scamming was a common thing here and you just had to be sure who you invited.

Ultimately what ended up happening was that our guildmaster's account got compromised and whoever took control of it randomly invited more people and promoted all of them to the highest rank so the guild was dead in an hour. That was my first taste of pure metagaming at the time but I did not know the name of it. DMs labeled it as PvP and would not interfere with players account in that manner so our beloved guild Torcan faded into obscurity.

With the above in mind what I personally (just like Bob mentioned) want to see is some dedication. Tarkuul is a inclusive place but it takes effort to get over that hurdle at first. When I see someone splitting their time on multiple chars I think they have not found that one character they can put a sign on and say "this is my main, I made this" and be proud of it. By such I do not invest time on them until I get a response back and I hope I have never come across as demanding to other players (correct me if I am wrong) because I want everyone to have fun

Do not assume Evil intent.

Most of the time players only want to explore and experience new things.

I don't assume evil intent, but people metagame without even knowing it.

Its simply better if they stick to one faction....Or permakill all their characters to join the dark side

Should they be held accountable if they do it unconsciously?

Very_Svensk wrote:

Should they be held accountable if they do it unconsciously?

It's pretty hard to nail that stuff down, so it's best if players just do their best to not do it! One way is to just remind other players in an OOC way here and there when they feel information is being transferred in game. Just a subtle tell or whatever every so often, here and there may help.

Very_Svensk wrote:

Should they be held accountable if they do it unconsciously?

This is why faction leaders are allowed to say no to them.

[redacted]

Yossarin wrote:

Terra_777 wrote:

Maybe its just time to set it in stone.

I would rather see faction leaders encouraged to take greater charge of their factions and given wide berth to police their own factions. Otherwise, we get into some very sticky territory if DMs do not appear to equally defect/protect one faction over another.

This. Leaders IC really need to be leaders OOC, too. Police yourselves.

If a player is having a problem with how another player uses OOC info:

First- talk to the player. Let them know it bothers you in a nice way, and don't be a you-know-what.

If that doesn't work, talk to their faction leader, and make them aware of the issue, and see if there is anything that can be done about it

If that doesn't work, talk to other faction leaders involved in the storyline in question, and see if they can help resolve the issue.

If all of that fails, then MAYBE it's time to talk to a DM about the player causing issues with their meta-gaming.

We gotta get the knee jerk reactions out of our role-play to keep it fun. Running to mommy or daddy dm every time a player does something that annoys you is... well... not conducive to good role-play.

If a player cannot be trusted to play characters in separate factions they shouldn't be allowed to join a faction in the first place, or the ability to have more than one character should be removed if that's one's reasoning. There are ample ways of meta-gaming information without being directly involved in one or more factions, limiting a player's ability to join one or more isn't going to change that fact, I doubt it'll even have any reasonable affect on lowering it. Since there still other ways such information can be obtained and used inappropriately, such as being fed the information in any ooc manner, like being told such in tells for example. Our time should be spent looking for ways that people can get involved and welcomed into things on the server, not search for OOC excuses or restrictions to keep them out. If somebody breaks a rule simply punish the person(s) in question (if found guilty of such) and be done with it.

Regards
Monkey Business

The people you punish also have a tendency to leave the server... Further escalating our stagnation

Factioning Up Your Alts, A Kind of Devil.

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