Character number limitations per account.

[Akilles]

Hello Everyone,

This is going to be my first post on these forums and I just created my first character in game yesterday. I thought that I might add the perspective of someone who just went through the process of choosing a server to the discussion. I initially ruled out Awakening due to the 10 character limit.

One of my favorite things on live was the vendor someone setup for me in the mall of our small player city. It never made me rich but the fact I would sell a few thousand dollars of low level stims a day while I was leveling convinced me to keep going to eventually have a master doctor. Since not everyone could have novice medic yet alone all the boxes required for using the higher stims my doctor was able to create a small niche in the large game where my services of crappy stims (I was still very young and not very good at games yet!) was actually a valued contribution. If the situation were different and no one had bought my stims I probably would not have continued on with master doctor and had the experience that is resulting in my desire to play again today. I understand the feeling it must bring to think about losing hundreds of hours of work you've invested into characters. In the interests of attracting and keeping new players I hope you will consider things from their point of view. One of the best things about live was experimenting with and tweaking your character as your interests/needs changed. It helped me feel like my character was really an extension of myself and not just another place where I kept my other things.

Anyway I hope this was constructive and that you will consider the experience that you all had which brought you back to this game. If SWG had been another game where you could have anything you wanted yourself would you be interested in playing it today?

[fricray]

I would really like if the number (6) was a consideration for char limit. Currently I have (9) and would be willing in good faith to give up (3), despite the time and effort put into building them up. The other (6) I have are actually (3 mains) with alts. They are the backbone of the trade I run (Mos Espa Trading). My real-life schedule only permits brief stays on Awakening, and after being on the server since it launched, I find that with the (6) I am able to maintain the business more efficiently.

Thanks for your consideration!

C7 Consortium:
Megum-Ogun YaYa
Ogun Arere
Beloved YaYa
Mirra Une
ChiChi YaYa
Sirena Yemoja

[kriptkpr]

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.

Aside from the technical side of this issue/conversation, which mind you is rather important to the topic, it seems the decision that will be best for the game and/or its future/development at this point is to reduce the number to 5. This allows the servers some 'breathing room' for expansion and new players and still allows players to have several alts.

Players need to think of the game, when making this choice, not their 'needs' or wants, I see over 40% of the vote for keeping the number at 10, to me that says that there is a rather large number of people that dont care about the future of the game but instead about themselves, the decision is the Dev's to make, not ours, they are asking for input from us to better help them make a decision that will make the fewest people mad at them, coz in all honesty we all know that any player that has more toons than the Dev's decide is going to get mad, but that is life and people need to stop thinking about themselves and accept it.

I was a crafter in SWG so I know all about alts, the players voting to keep the number at 10 says that those are the ones that blanket resource spawns and ultimately ruin the in game economy, they are not thinking about the game but instead about how much they personally will stand to loose and what others will be able to gain/take from them. It is rather sad..... :'(

We are lucky the Dev's are even allowing us to voice our opinions, and what i see here is almost half the people are unwilling to make the tough/right choices for the future of the game, which is why many game Developers Don't do what these one's are.

I hope the Dev's make the best choice for the game and it's future..

[ChyldeMyst]

with respect my guild mate stated one true fact and that is this at the moment we got 10 slots well 9 breaks 10 so we can only have 9 characters when it goes down to 5 that can only mean one thing 5 will break 4 so that be even less not attacking but i felt it needed to be said because even i did not catch that on

just my 2 cents

Umm, what do you mean by "9 breaks 10" and "5 will break 4"? I literally have no idea what you could possibly mean by this.

[Dauko]

I will be honest...I leaved swgemu because I thought 10 chars per account was really too much...with the server growing in number of accounts, every time I had to put down some harvesters AND WITH THE BAD HABIT TO PUBLISH ON THE SITE THE WAYPOINTS OF THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE it was more and more difficult...a real nightmare.

I moved on this server hoping there were more limitations...you promised a real, HARD, pre CU experience but the only BORING (not HARD) thing I experienced is a reduced drop rate in loots, an annoying bleeding everytime you aggro a humanoid (and I mean EVERY TIME) and nothing more. Economy is stuck (for what I can see) and imho it's in large part due to the ability to be self sufficient for everyone so to create everything (or near to everything) it's needed.

That said I'll hang here as long as I don't get bored again, than I'll wait for the emu to wipe the actual server and start over, hoping for the reductions they promised when beta stage will end (so 1 or 2 chars per account). THAT WILL BE THE REAL PRE CU EXPERIENCE.

Thanks for reading.

[bobaphat]

Am I the only one that doesn't want the REAL PRE CU experience?
I think some of you have really thick rose coloured glasses on right now.

[Maximus0369]

Am I the only one that doesn't want the REAL PRE CU experience?
I think some of you have really thick rose coloured glasses on right now.

I like the play style but one thing that a lot of these folks that are voting below 10 don't seem to grasp is with live you could have as many accounts as you wanted to pay for. Here you get a single account.

[Hunter]

Am I the only one that doesn't want the REAL PRE CU experience?
I think some of you have really thick rose coloured glasses on right now.

I like the play style but one thing that a lot of these folks that are voting below 10 don't seem to grasp is with live you could have as many accounts as you wanted to pay for. Here you get a single account.

I doubt many people in Live were paying for 5 accounts.
If you were paying for 5 accounts you were contributing to the cost of the infrastructure needed to support those 5 accounts. It scaled. Here you're getting that one account for free because the Devs decided to pay for everything themselves. If you make more characters it costs them more money.

I think for the most part this server is already doing better than PRE CU was. More is not always better. There are good things about have more characters and there are bad things about having more characters. I think it's better for the server if you have to rely on other players more (less characters). A lot of people like to provide everything for themselves though and never need anyone else (more characters).

[Maximus0369]

Am I the only one that doesn't want the REAL PRE CU experience?
I think some of you have really thick rose coloured glasses on right now.

I like the play style but one thing that a lot of these folks that are voting below 10 don't seem to grasp is with live you could have as many accounts as you wanted to pay for. Here you get a single account.

I doubt many people in Live were paying for 5 accounts.
If you were paying for 5 accounts you were contributing to the cost of the infrastructure needed to support those 5 accounts. It scaled. Here you're getting that one account for free because the Devs decided to pay for everything themselves.
).

They can't charge us money it would be illegal... Your point is invalid.

[QuorTek]

But they could call it something else like VIP membership for assisting in keeping maintaince of the hardware in order to keep their scientific/engineering experiment running more smooth with a volounterely donation system or a charity system where the surplus would go to Red Cross or something alike it.

[Cynar]

But they could call it something else like VIP membership for assisting in keeping maintaince of the hardware in order to keep their scientific/engineering experiment running more smooth with a volounterely donation system or a charity system where the surplus would go to Red Cross or something alike it.

We could charge for membership fee just to become a member of this website. You have to be a member of this website to be eligible to get your free game account.

A) That would be an immediate turnoff for 99% of new players when so many other sites are completely free.
B) Membership fees come with a certain level of expectations we just aren't ready or willing to meet at this time
C) This would probably really piss the swgemu team off and others that have donated their time and code to make this venture, this game free to all. Causing them to immediately pull our engine license.


Not gonna happen. We will always accept and appreciate donations. This server will be reliant on the community to be active and want to keep her going by helping out a bit when they can afford it.

[Hunter]

They can't charge us money it would be illegal... Your point is invalid.

Ok, I'll admit I'm off topic here. Apologies to the devs.

Which point is invalidated by this?
Are you saying because the team can't charge us, the server doesn't cost them anything?
Or are you saying that because the team can't charge us, having to upgrade the server to support more characters doesn't cost them anything?
Are you suggesting that because the team was kind enough to buy a server and put so much effort into running it, they should be required to let us have 100 characters just because you theoretically could in Live by paying $1000 a month? If the server needs an upgrade to support it should they just pay the cost and never ask us to scale it down?

[Hunter]

We could charge for membership fee just to become a member of this website. You have to be a member of this website to be eligible to get your free game account.

And just to be clear, I'm not suggesting something like this should happen. I'm just saying that just because a player isn't paying anything doesn't mean there isn't a cost to someone somewhere. They should consider that and be a bit appreciative.

Thanks by the way

[Maximus0369]

So we can get back on the correct topic for this forum post. Any and all fees associated with this server are handled by the Dev/CSR team. Any contributions us members provide are provided as a thank you and to help ease the cost to the tremendous team that allows us to play on their server.

My statement was regarding the number of players allowable. On this server we are allowed 10 character slots, sure this is subject to change as any aspect of the server as the Dev/CSRs see fit. On live if you wanted more character slots you could simple create another subscription and voila more slots available. You have to meet special circumstances here in order to be allowed multiple accounts.

So as simply as I can state it - I support 10 character slots.

[KirstoAndCo]

I voted for 10.

2 would be utterly inadequate, especially for those of us who are not on at peak population times. Without buffs the game is unplayable, so realistically to support a single character people will need a doctor and a dancer / musician.

5 is obviously better than 2, but I would say it spoils the fun of SWG's unique character development. What I mean by that is it limits the ability to make hybrid characters. As I said before, for those of us on at off-peak times, we're going to need a doctor, dancer and musician. If we can only have 5 characters then, realistically, that dancer and musician has to be a single character who will be little more than a buff monkey.

10 gives so much more scope for creativity. For instance, rather than having a buff monkey entertainer you could have a dancer / TKA hybrid, a musician / something, maybe an ID / tailor combination. With a fairly small population having a larger number of character slots gives RPers much more scope, they can create temporary characters to be used in RP stories etc without having to compromise long term game play by not using all of a small number of character slots.

There will always be interdependency as most people are not going to care enough about crafting to create the large stockpiles of top resources and obtain the crafting SEAs needed to produce server best gear. I would also say that forcing interdependence for the benefit of a few is a really bad idea, as is deleting characters people may have spent a lot of time on. Sure, I understand the issues with DB size, but if it can be avoided I would strongly urge you not to cut the character slots.

Finally, I would just like to point out, for those who've voted for a number based on how many characters they have, if people want to play with 2 or 3 characters they can do so, even if there are empty character slots. Those of us who like to have numerous characters shouldn't be limited just because others don't wish to have that many.

[Lennart]

As I write this post, the voting stands at 20% in favor of 2 characters, 40% in favor of 5 characters, and 40% in favor with 10 characters, with 10 characters having lead in the very low double digits of actual votes cast.

This brings up a question that I feel is relevant here...if not I trust the good people running this board will shunt it to the right spot.

How will the votes be counted?

Looked at one way, the most people (at this time) want to keep 10 character slots. They have a plurality...but they do not have a majority.

Looked at another way, only 40% of the people want to keep 10 character slots, while 60% want less than 10. Of that 60%, two-thirds of them want 5 character slots, and one-third of them want 2 character slots.

Looked at a third way, 80% of the people want more than 2 character slots. Of that 80%, half want 5, the other half wants 10.

So which way is correct? Are we going by which category has the plurality of votes, even if not a majority? Or do we look at it the second way, or the third way?

[Cynar]

As I write this post, the voting stands at 20% in favor of 2 characters, 40% in favor of 5 characters, and 40% in favor with 10 characters, with 10 characters having lead in the very low double digits of actual votes cast.

This brings up a question that I feel is relevant here...if not I trust the good people running this board will shunt it to the right spot.

How will the votes be counted?

Looked at one way, the most people (at this time) want to keep 10 character slots. They have a plurality...but they do not have a majority.

Looked at another way, only 40% of the people want to keep 10 character slots, while 60% want less than 10. Of that 60%, two-thirds of them want 5 character slots, and one-third of them want 2 character slots.

Looked at a third way, 80% of the people want more than 2 character slots. Of that 80%, half want 5, the other half wants 10.

So which way is correct? Are we going by which category has the plurality of votes, even if not a majority? Or do we look at it the second way, or the third way?

This is a fact finding poll for us. There is no winner or loser. Percentages and numbers are for our information for future decisions in multiple areas.

[Lennart]

This is a fact finding poll for us. There is no winner or loser. Percentages and numbers are for our information for future decisions in multiple areas.

Fair enough, and thanks for being up front about that. It's an interesting conundrum with these types of polls that they can be read multiple ways, and each way is correct, even if they can yield potentially different outcomes.

[Jsabre]

If we were all sufficient with 10 toons each why bother having an economy at all? I think 4 is plenty. It is good to require somebody else for weapons and meds and so on.

[beowulfchauffeur]

If we were all sufficient with 10 toons each why bother having an economy at all? I think 4 is plenty. It is good to require somebody else for weapons and meds and so on.

I'm genuinely confused by the people who think that 10 character slots means everyone is doing their own personal crafting. SWG's crafting system is not even remotely conducive to that - mastering the professions means very little in terms of creating viable results; the real key to crafting is having high-quality samples of all the very specific resources used to craft what you're trying to make.

Can anyone here honestly say that they craft their own armor or weapons (which are at least competitive stat-wise with gear on the market) but aren't running a vendor? If not, why not?

With regard to the issue of doctoring, as someone who plays a doctor as his main, I can definitely say that there are quite a few players out there with a doctor alt used for buffing themselves or friends. While this does have a limited economic impact, those players are rarely - if ever - crafting their own buffpacks (because once again, mastery of the profession is not the main thing, obtaining high-quality samples of the humongous amount of different resources used in crafting is), so they're still contributing to the economy.