Character Count

[chrisleaptrott]

We would be increasing city requirements anyway, it was turned down due to being a new server. It needs to be at least the level of Live (very soon). That's been mentioned before. The reason is limitation of city slots.

To be honest, having 10 characters is WAY over what most individuals had on Live and it does cause long term repercussions. I have no problem with people having more characters (you could argue self-sufficiency but the type of player that does grind out 10 useful characters are probably individuals that would buy 5+ accounts on live) but those characters being used primarily for slots and cluttering the landscape with 234242224242932492483 structures starts getting ridiculous and will eventually hurt server loads (not to mention economic impact). So instead of talking about a reduction in characters... I suggested a reduction in character slots.

These issues are related yet separate. Reducing slots doesn't reduce citizen potential. Simply increasing citizen requirements doesn't resolve the harvester farms.

Current SWGA: CitizensPerRank = {5, 10, 15, 25, 50}
Pre-CU SWG: CitizensPerRank = {10, 20, 35, 55, 85}

I think having 3 slots is reasonable enough, but that's just me.

[BigQEd]

Rather than reducing slots per character, why not just cap the total number of slots per account?

Currently there is no code structure in place to make changes such as this, so it would require a good bit to implement.

[Wodaz]

We would be increasing city requirements anyway, it was turned down due to being a new server. It needs to be at least the level of Live (very soon). That's been mentioned before. The reason is limitation of city slots.

To be honest, having 10 characters is WAY over what most individuals had on Live and it does cause long term repercussions. I have no problem with people having more characters (you could argue self-sufficiency but the type of player that does grind out 10 useful characters are probably individuals that would buy 5+ accounts on live) but those characters being used primarily for slots and cluttering the landscape with 234242224242932492483 structures starts getting ridiculous and will eventually hurt server loads (not to mention economic impact). So instead of talking about a reduction in characters... I suggested a reduction in character slots.

These issues are related yet separate. Reducing slots doesn't reduce citizen potential. Simply increasing citizen requirements doesn't resolve the harvester farms.

Current SWGA: CitizensPerRank = {5, 10, 15, 25, 50}
Pre-CU SWG: CitizensPerRank = {10, 20, 35, 55, 85}

I think having 3 slots is reasonable enough, but that's just me.

Doesn't some of the structures take more then 3 slots??

[Marros]

I would prefer having 5 characters with 10 lots each over 10 characters with 5 lots each. Only being able to drop a few harvesters per character will get to be tedious, I'd rather have them all consolidated onto the same characters.

[Tonkakid]

Got to be able to keep players! No players no awakening

[Granpappy]

We would be increasing city requirements anyway, it was turned down due to being a new server. It needs to be at least the level of Live (very soon). That's been mentioned before. The reason is limitation of city slots.

To be honest, having 10 characters is WAY over what most individuals had on Live and it does cause long term repercussions. I have no problem with people having more characters (you could argue self-sufficiency but the type of player that does grind out 10 useful characters are probably individuals that would buy 5+ accounts on live) but those characters being used primarily for slots and cluttering the landscape with 234242224242932492483 structures starts getting ridiculous and will eventually hurt server loads (not to mention economic impact). So instead of talking about a reduction in characters... I suggested a reduction in character slots.

These issues are related yet separate. Reducing slots doesn't reduce citizen potential. Simply increasing citizen requirements doesn't resolve the harvester farms.

Current SWGA: CitizensPerRank = {5, 10, 15, 25, 50}
Pre-CU SWG: CitizensPerRank = {10, 20, 35, 55, 85}

I think having 3 slots is reasonable enough, but that's just me.

Disagree - should be at least 5

[psykocis]

I like lower character count with more slots. To even sweeten the deal a bit all toons on the account should be able to pick up and drop down the other toons equipment that has been placed to minimize having to continually swapping toons to pay maintenances, move machinery etc... I guess that would also work for having more toons with less available slots as well.

[Granpappy]

Got to be able to keep players! No players no awakening

This is true - you'll never make everyone happy but I think most players would accept cutting slots to 5 per character and keeping the 10 characters per account the best compromise overall. Otherwise you're going to force people into deciding which characters they will keep and which to delete and that won't make most players happy.

Basically the character count was set at 10 because the server was new and now that the server is growing certain players want to "reward" those who worked and played hard to get it there by forcing deletions of current characters. If the number of characters was SO important to the long term development of the server the count should have been set lower at the beginning...BEFORE players got used to having them.

I think everyone by now knows my opinion on the matter

[jwyork]

kind of wish this was sorted prior to the city increases. Love most of the patch but less than a couple of hours warning that cities would shrink is bad. I personally will not lose a shuttle only metro rank but some will lose shuttles.

I kind of feel like city size and character limits go hand in hand. Just my opinion. Of the two options though I'd rather reduce to 5 and have 10 lots each .. I'm with marros on that it makes it a choice between do you want a house or do you want to place harvesters on crafters .. so in the end I believe it will hurt some cities A LOT.

[Anomaly]

Got to be able to keep players! No players no awakening

This is true - you'll never make everyone happy but I think most players would accept cutting slots to 5 per character and keeping the 10 characters per account the best compromise overall. Otherwise you're going to force people into deciding which characters they will keep and which to delete and that won't make most players happy.

Basically the character count was set at 10 because the server was new and now that the server is growing certain players want to "reward" those who worked and played hard to get it there by forcing deletions of current characters. If the number of characters was SO important to the long term development of the server the count should have been set lower at the beginning...BEFORE players got used to having them.

I think everyone by now knows my opinion on the matter

"that won't make most players happy"
--I think you are incorrect here. I think "most" players dont have 10 toons. and those that do would likely lose very little if they lost some. Are there some? yes. but "MOST"? no i dont think so.

"If the number of characters was SO important to the long term development of the server the count should have been set lower at the beginning...BEFORE players got used to having them."

-- So are you saying that if something was found, that could potentially be a big problem later for the server, you should not fix it, because people are used to it?
I think thats a pretty selfish way to look at things.

I think the long term growth and survival of this beloved game is the most important thing.
And if reducing characters is going to help that happen, then EVERYONE should understand that its the right thing to do, even if its an inconvenience.

[Granpappy]

Got to be able to keep players! No players no awakening

This is true - you'll never make everyone happy but I think most players would accept cutting slots to 5 per character and keeping the 10 characters per account the best compromise overall. Otherwise you're going to force people into deciding which characters they will keep and which to delete and that won't make most players happy.

Basically the character count was set at 10 because the server was new and now that the server is growing certain players want to "reward" those who worked and played hard to get it there by forcing deletions of current characters. If the number of characters was SO important to the long term development of the server the count should have been set lower at the beginning...BEFORE players got used to having them.

I think everyone by now knows my opinion on the matter

"that won't make most players happy"
--I think you are incorrect here. I think "most" players dont have 10 toons. and those that do would likely lose very little if they lost some. Are there some? yes. but "MOST"? no i dont think so.

"If the number of characters was SO important to the long term development of the server the count should have been set lower at the beginning...BEFORE players got used to having them."

-- So are you saying that if something was found, that could potentially be a big problem later for the server, you should not fix it, because people are used to it?
I think thats a pretty selfish way to look at things.

I think the long term growth and survival of this beloved game is the most important thing.
And if reducing characters is going to help that happen, then EVERYONE should understand that its the right thing to do, even if its an inconvenience.

You and I can agree to disagree. The original live character count of 1 was draconian and forced people who wanted to do more to just buy more accounts - we don't have that choice here. I believe that SOE knew that by restricting the character count to 1 or 2 - people would pay for additional accounts and many did including myself. I can't imagine being stuck with one character...I just can't - I would get bored and quit.

I can however see players that are mostly into combat being just fine with one character...be a Bounty Hunter forever which seems to be the only freaking combat role most players take besides Jedi. But crafters in general like more variety and I never met one crafter live or otherwise who picked ONE....just one and that was it. I knew players that had 10+ accounts and many many more that had 2 or 3 and the only thing that killed SWG was SOE and LA.

BigEd is right when he says that the majority of the other characters made by players are used for housing, factory and harvester spots. I currently have 3 characters that are maxed or will be and will probably end up with 5 total in some prof or another. The others will be used for everything else...harvesters mostly.

More than likely I'll settle on 2 crafting profs to excel in and while I'm sure it's possible to someone to excel in all the profs if they wanted...how many will actually achieve that?

[ChyldeMyst]

Halving the lot count is going to screw any character who tries to put down a public structure for a city. One cantina, med center, or guild hall, and you've used the character's entire supply of lots. What you'll end up with is a lot of throwaway characters that never get played and never contribute to the economy, but are created solely for the purpose of lots. And you'll still have the self-sufficiency problem in the economy... you'll just have fewer and smaller player cities because no one will want to tie up half or all of a character's lots maintaining city structures when they could be spamming harvesters instead.

[RickyL]

Remove player cities and add their skill enhancements to capital cities, keep the 10 character slots, problem solved.

[Faceoff]

Remove player cities and add their skill enhancements to capital cities, keep the 10 character slots, problem solved.

Good luck storing anything

[ChyldeMyst]

Remove player cities and add their skill enhancements to capital cities, keep the 10 character slots, problem solved.

...

...

Eliminating player cities altogether would destroy an enormous part of what makes this game so unique among MMOs. This game was always about the community, and players interacting with each other and working together to build something greater. I was merely trying to warn about a potential consequence to that play style, and you counter by suggesting that part of the driving force of this game be removed entirely just so people can keep their enormous stable of characters?

[Teethgrinder]

At best I had 3 accounts with 2 characters on each (NGE.) But knew people who had many more.
For me anywhere between 5 and 8 characters would be ok.

[lordannoyed]

I'm new so excuse me if I misspeak or sound ignorant on the topic. Some of you are concerned about how ppl already have a monopoly on this system. How old is this server? It's my understanding awakening started up in Oct or Nov of 2014? So in like 5 months they established themselves and that bothers you? That blows my mind. If you spend several months building up a business I would hope that it would be doing good, otherwise what are you doing? I think concerns on what the server's economy is doing right now are unfounded. This server, while it seems to be picking up speed is still pretty young. And let's be honest with ourselves, even though many of us LOVED swg in some form or another, this is a game that's over 10 years old. Finding ppl who want to play may take some time. I say give the server some time to age and ripen before you start freaking out over who has monopolies RIGHT NOW.

I do feel that Ed's concern about logging on and seeing seas of harvesters is troubling and while I voted higher I would be ok with a lower number bc he has a very valid point. That point being I'd rather lose a few character slots instead of not being able to put down my own harvesters/houses where I want to bc ppl have seas of harvesters covering the land. Also, as a personal request, try not to freak out on Ed or the staff. They sound truly genuine. Again, I know I'm new but I pride myself on my judge of character. *steps off soap box*

[Centurionforce]

Got to be able to keep players! No players no awakening

That has been my point.

[darriandm]

I'm new so excuse me if I misspeak or sound ignorant on the topic. Some of you are concerned about how ppl already have a monopoly on this system. How old is this server? It's my understanding awakening started up in Oct or Nov of 2014? So in like 5 months they established themselves and that bothers you? That blows my mind. If you spend several months building up a business I would hope that it would be doing good, otherwise what are you doing? I think concerns on what the server's economy is doing right now are unfounded. This server, while it seems to be picking up speed is still pretty young. And let's be honest with ourselves, even though many of us LOVED swg in some form or another, this is a game that's over 10 years old. Finding ppl who want to play may take some time. I say give the server some time to age and ripen before you start freaking out over who has monopolies RIGHT NOW.

I'm actually not worried so much about monopolies. The few people who *seem* to have monopolies only have them because the server is young like you say, and **good** resources take time to build up. Over time other crafters will pop up, you can already see it happening.

I'm worried more about self-sufficiency. People say things like, "Oh, well, the type of person that grinds out several characters is the type of person that would have owned 5+ accounts in live" and I just don't feel that's true. Like I've said before, look at smuggler as an example. Smuggler takes about a day or two to grind out, and takes virtually no maintenance to use. Spice for example isn't effected by quality, so you can get whatever crappy resources you can get your hands on and make the same quality spice as anyone else, and you'd also be able to slice all your own weapons and armor. Over a long enough period of time, there would be no reason virtually everyone wouldn't have their own smuggler to provide themselves with these things.

Where does that leave people who actually enjoy and want to play on their own smuggler? Well, I guess they could just do missions for all their income, but that's not a solution is it? They wanted to play a smuggler for what makes it unique, that's why we *all* played pre-cu SWG, we loved the sense of community it had. It had that sense of community because we were forced to rely on and communicate with other people. Seriously, go back and read forum posts from like, 2004. This was considered a *good* feature because it made people feel more invested and attached to their character and it made the economy feel worthwhile.

5 characters is more than plenty. I've seen people keep saying "Oh well I had this many accounts in live, and so did a bunch of other people!"

5 accounts would have cost you 75 dollars a month. Don't pretend that this was how the majority of players were set up, or how the game was designed to be.

[Centurionforce]

Lets stop pretending this is about what the game was designed to be like. Or that it is about the economy of the game. Or anything like that. Its about numbers. This server currently does not have enough players to piss all the peep that will lose toons and leave because of it. It is that simple!