Character number limitations per account.

[Cynar]

Hi everyone! This topic has been quite controversial and highly debated in the past. We as a staff have been back and forth on it and would officially like to know what the players think. Do you think we should cut back on numbers of characters per account? How many? and Why we should or should not?

If character numbers were chosen to be reduced there would be a date given for a self-reduction to take place. That means depending on the event of a reduction you would be given a period of time to cleanup and choose yourself. After that date if there are more than said number of characters per account (2 or 5 in the event of reduction of course) then you would have those characters chosen for you. A reasonable amount of time would be given to all players if a reduction were to occur. This is only if players and staff can come to an agreement on character reductions


I am going to leave this poll up for the next 30 days. I want the conversation to stay on topic, be polite to your fellow account holders as everyone's opinion matters. Do not threaten to leave, quit, etc because you don't like the topic or the possibilities it may present in the future. Those posts will not be taken seriously and will be deleted. We don't like /angerquit /slitwrists posts around here.

You may indeed voice your opinion but we ask that you do so in a civil, well presented manor. As i mentioned please stay on topic and do not derail the thread. If it does not pertain to the number of characters per account it is not on topic, don't make up any b.s. reasons not to stay on topic as they will be discarded. This was sent to all community members via PM. Each account gets one vote, and one vote only. You may change your vote at anytime during the voting period. Specific numbers will matter in this vote, so vote wisely.

We cannot charge players for extra slots. No we aren't changing code for harvesters or structure limits. We may however reduce the city level requirements to flow better if any changes are made. There are no grandfather clauses being considered, we are simply asking you to vote and leave a simple reply as to why you voted that way!

[Maverick2002]

I guess the question that many are going to have is this:

What will happen to the characters people have created if less than 10 is the option we move forward with?

Admittedly there probably isn't many who have 10 full template toons, let alone the time to play each of them but, no doubt there are some players who will find themselves a bit miffed if they have to choose their 5 or 2 favourites and see the rest got mothballed.

[Cynar]

As a current and hopefully future to the end of the servers days player on this server, I would like to know the devs take on this matter before I submit a vote. I know our opinions matter some but overall the server is ups to run and control and I, as a very popular player in this server want to know what the devs think before I make a brash decision.

I can tell you from a technical standpoint and hardware issues, size does matter ::)

As databases grow, more players come in, the databases grow more. They require larger amounts of RAM, drive space, etc. The Berkley DB is a beast by itself. It takes up a ton of our resources. Anything and everything we can do to reduce the footprint of players on the system only adds to system performance and stability.

At some point we will need to grow our hardware again. That takes more money and like any growth there is always some pains or headaches involved for both players and staff. You have to ask yourself do I really need 10 characters or would 2 or 5 really suffice to have the server run better and keep longterm costs down?

I am not voting as I have made my opinion know to Staff and Community in the past.

[Saereth]

I think 10 is too much because, less means less lots and more inter-dependencies which is good for the economy and community. With a substantially lower than live population however the myriad of alts help with things like city residency requirements, have alt buffers you can login when none are on for people etc. So 5 seems like a good compromise. How would this impact people that currently have more than 5 though?

[Cynar]

I understand costs, time, work and effort change as the server population grows and I've witnessed firsthand how good the community as well as the devs adapt. My only concern with so many character slots is stability and balance on the server. We've seen pvp rise and fall as quickly as a sandstorm sweeps across Tatooine, the overall health of the server is what I'm more concerned with.

As for my vote, and I'm more than happy to announce it, 5 character slots should be more than enough to suit anyone and everyone who is currently on and plans to join the server in the future.

Do we as current players get to dictate which characters we keep and which have to go?


EDIT: cancel that last question as I see it has been made clear in the original post.

I have altered the original post to include the following. Hopefully that is clear enough for the majority of folks to understand.

"If character numbers were chosen to be reduced there would be a date given for a self-reduction to take place. That means depending on the event of a reduction you would be given a period of time to cleanup and choose yourself. After that date if there are more than said number of characters per account (2 or 5 in the event of reduction of course) then you would have those characters chosen for you. A reasonable amount of time would be given to all players if a reduction were to occur. This is only if players and staff can come to an agreement on character reductions"


May was a bumpy month as staff moved everyone to a new server, delivered a ton of patches, and some new content. It's also summertime, so us nerds, geeks, and drones will be out in the sunshine a bit more. Vacations take people away from the Universe. I imagine once October hits, schools is well underway you will see activity pick up again. Don't forget Episode 7 will be out in December. Unless I am wrong I am guessing we will see a flood of fellows nerds hoping on to "Live the Saga" with us once again!

[Cynar]

I think 10 is too much because, less means less lots and more inter-dependencies which is good for the economy and community. With a substantially lower than live population however the myriad of alts help with things like city residency requirements, have alt buffers you can login when none are on for people etc. So 5 seems like a good compromise. How would this impact people that currently have more than 5 though?

Hypothetical situation only

If it was limited to 5 characters in the future and someone has more than 5 they would need to decide which ones were the most important to them. We would give them a set amount time, but reasonable amount of time to move items, money, etc and cleanup their account and prune their account themselves. After that cutoff date if more than 5 characters existed on an account then a script would choose for them.

[DeusingMono]

2 is too few. If the limit were taken down to 2 I believe you would see an influx of people attempting to create multiple accounts and jumping through hoops to get around the limits in ways that cannot be reliably detected.

I personally like having 10 but I can see the issues it creates. For one I believe it is hurting or holding back the economy. From an IT standpoint I completely understand the issues as related to hardware load, database size etc.

I think going with the middle ground of 5 is the best compromise.

This is coming from somebody who paid for and actively played 4 accounts with 9 toons on live.

[Athair]

Although it is unlikely that I would use 10 character slots, I enjoy the ability to create what I need. During Live, I had three accounts so that I may have the characters enough to be self sufficient (6), using all to contribute to the SWG community. Having the extra character slots gives us all the ability to contribute to a community that is currently flourishing, without having to open/purchase a new account for the additional slots.

Another thing we used to do on live was users from other servers would create characters to give extra lots in exchange for lots on their server. I would not want to see this happen on Awakening (and if limited to 5, I still would not do).

Granted, I am currently using only 3 slots, I have a feeling I will end up using at least 5, because I often lamented on live that I needed another account so that I could create a 7th character.

Whatever the community decides, I am good with. Otherwise, I vote for 10, and believe that anything less than 5 would stifle the economy.

[Amans728]

I can't see myself creating more than 4 characters. I only have 3 at the moment, and I've been playing for about 3.5 months. When I played live during NGE I had 4 characters split between 2 accounts (multiple accounts were allowed)
10 seems excessive to me, personally. I would say between 5-8 characters per account

[jasonh]

I can understand why folks who aren't invested in 10 toons don't care. Essentially, NIMBY applies.

I voted 10. I would be greatly disappointed to have to trash half or 80%(!) of the toons that I have leveled. I wish 8 had been an option in the poll, as I would give that great consideration.

As was my opinion when this was addressed months ago (http://swgawakening.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1089), if there was to be a change it should have happened long ago.

[QuorTek]

I voted 10 characters as have more than 5 currently, I don't think this would be good tampering with people that has more than 5 and am happy with it, also it has been 10 character slots since the well like forever, so maybe in a figure of speech kind of way might have to implent a veteran system.

if it is flooding the server with structures or something would suggest to add in other hardcaps for like lets say max 40 harvesters account wise active at a time, max 5 factories and max 10 houses of any size and kind.

Otherwise if implented in different would say you have to allow two accounts for those that use more or something, sounds weird though, but it is something that need to be taken into consideration. ... some might never use more than 3 characters.. others may use 8... someone may use 10... another may use 6.


I said stay on topic, and I meant it. Keep the color commentary to a minimum. Keep being critical and it won't matter for you much longer!

Cynar

[ChyldeMyst]

I can understand why folks who aren't invested in 10 toons don't care. Essentially, NIMBY applies.

I voted 10. I would be greatly disappointed to have to trash half or 80%(!) of the toons that I have leveled. I wish 8 had been an option in the poll, as I would give that great consideration.

As was my opinion when this was addressed months ago (http://swgawakening.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1089), if there was to be a change it should have happened long ago.

Not all of us voting for 5 have 5 or less. I personally have 7, and if we downsize I'll be losing at least 8 citizens from my city. I'll probably lose my cloner, maybe my parking garage. But a city can be rebuilt. The 10-character limit is crippling to the economy - why buy something when you can just grind up an alt and make it yourself? Why make friends and network when you can build an outpost all on your own, and a metropolis with your four closest meatspace friends? It really IS better for the game to reduce our stables and make us depend on each other more.

[1z1]

[NT]

[ukpredator]

I would actually suggest a 3 character limit, 2 seems too few to enjoy multiple professions and 5 seems too many to me - it removes the need for requiring the community aspect of the game. Personally, I would like to see 3 possibly pushed to a maximum of 4.

[Kelec]

Im not sure if something like this is possible or not. Could you allow for additional character slots, say beyond 5, as a donation reward? And would it be possible to be retroactive, so people who donated over the last 6 months or so don't necessarily end up losing toon if they have been a contributor.

Edit - As an aside, I would totally love the option to log in more than 2 toons at once following a similar line of thinking I posted above.

[yemenmocha]

I kindly ask that if there is going to be a cut in characters, say 5 characters, then you don't do it all at once to 5 characters. Maybe go to 8 characters first and evaluate the effects on the economy, player cities, etc.

What you don't want to happen is have people leave the server for good if it turns out this winds up being a mistake, and the mistake is then rolled back to 10. When people leave, often they leave for good. These emulator games rely on decent server population for the economy to function.

I think that extremes have to be avoided.
You don't want too few players, as well as too few characters and lots in the game. Player cities start to disappear. Prices for resources can be quite high because people can only do so much with harvesters. You also don't want too many characters and lots, as this can lead to overcrowding in desirable areas for housing and the sheer number of lots allows harvesting to such an extreme that it's hard to reasonably make good money as a resource harvester with those lots. There's too much supply, as supply is far too easy to acquire when everyone has 10 lots.

[Rentor]

10 is way to many, 5 is more then enough. remember when we only had 1? yeah those were the days.

[ChyldeMyst]

If I may say something, I think it's pretty cut-and-dried what our options are. Two characters, five characters, or ten characters. Suggesting other numbers or loopholes for people to keep all ten of their characters if a downsize wins out is probably only going to annoy the developers, who are generously presenting options and polling the community when it's well within their rights to dictatorially hand down a proclamation and make it so.

So can we please keep to a simple "this is my vote, and why" instead of proposing alternatives that were already discussed and rejected last time we did this?

[Acroyear]

Two things derail IT decisions more than anything else: making technical decisions with a calculator, and overly engaging the user base in an attempt to gain consensus rather than restricting the discussion to base requirements.

Ultimately this falls to the owner/operators of the server and I support whatever direction they may take with this.

Having said that, the suggestion I would offer is that you would grandfather in existing active users to the 10 character limit, or perhaps their existing number of characters if lower, with future players restricted to 5 characters. Call it a bonus in recognition of supporting Awakening in its earliest days. If that approach is opted for, then I would also suggest a database purge of players who haven't logged in for 90 days before setting those user account exceptions to the 5 character limit in place.

More personally, I have 6 characters, just above the median suggestion. I don't wanna kill any of my babies, if you take my meaning. I think if you opt to show sensitivity to how the players will react to setting a lower character limit, I think that is the point at which the whole debate will really be turning on. Just my two cents.

[... and our hero, now having expressed another opinion on the forums, hastily retreats to a safe distance while donning flame retardant gear...

[ZuraLuna]

Here's a thought, How about make any NEW accounts after "Said Date" cap at 5 characters. Let us keep our 10, some of us already committed our spare alts to helping other player cities, that would affect a lot of player cities if you just take away 5 characters just like that. Those who still have the 10 character slots, can receive a founders title, for being with Awakenings before the 5 character Kill.

Im also open for the idea of capping harvesters and or character lots.