Character number limitations per account.

[Gutwrench]

hello all , I haven't been able to play much lately , but I personally would be fine with 5 or 6 toons per account. There obviously must be some type of balance between needs/wants of players and abilities of staff and hardware +software that is used here. Questions I would also ask are : Is there enough people actively playing here to provide that interdependency on each other for goods and services ? Will this create an ' elite " class of players that already, or soon will have close to all, or all the greatest things that can be made, purchased or looted? Will this help the economy and player base, or will it hurt? Can the average player succeed here? And have fun? A good server IMHO, must provide or help provide a balance to all this and more , and must be able to establish a helpful community. The player base itself must be large enough and must be helpful to newer players or risk losing them. I'm not saying just drolling out weps, credits and armor or items to newer players, nor am I saying to boldly tell them " get off yur arse and grind". people play differently. What types of players and community do you want here ? That may be the larger question. I would be fine with 5-6 characters. I say this because I do not think there is enough peeps here that you could only have 2 toons. I think there would be several folks wandering where are all the docs, ents, and all the other related proffs? where can I get armor , weps? Or you would most certainly be forced to be a combat toon to loot items needed to survive. Either way ,. GL and God Speed .

[Fish]

It seems to me that the option of haveing 10 toons is an overborad reaction to spite John Smedly and the fools at Sony for screwing up a format that we all here once enjoyed. That time has now passed, and we have made our point that we are stronger than they ever concieved we could be.

My experience here now says that 10 toons is not entirely time managable for full development of 10 templates, unless you are a full time player, which many of us here are not anymore. Yes, when we all first got hooked a long time ago, on a server now far far away, we had glorious deams of multiple toons, and server domination. That time has again passed for many of us, who have grown, but yet still find the time to travel to SWG. The quick solution/opportunity to have 10 toons here now seems aluring, but in reality becomes a tiresome grind for 10 seperate toons to level any template.

I wish to add that having every account holder with 10 toons each degrades player interaction on some level, as I am a guild founder/leader, I am often at a loss of who is, and is not, a member/citizen, as so many stelth alts exist. This generates some levels of suspicion, and conflicts, as so many have bled thier time and efforts into other guilds and cities. We form player assoications that are fundimental to this format, that have weak foundations being so many spread thier player time out spread between other player assoications and cities.

I myself do use the 10 toons myself, yes, but mostly 8 of them are merly drones to drop harvesters, and sample resourses. I would venture to say many account holders are doing just the same. A reduction in toon amounts would have a direct impact on the in game economy as well, which would amount to a better supply/demand bazzar structure. To say that would be a deteriment, is difficult to gage, but this server is not a "care bear" server, and most of us prefer it that way. We hope never to see "EWOK LOVE DAY HERE!!!"

So my vote goes to "5" toons, which is a middle ground position right now, this may be more manageable. I would futher suggest this be part of a long term phase down effort, with the target goal of "2" toons per account. Which is exactly what eventually happend back on that server long ago, and far,far away now. Not to say this would inhibit anyone from "unlocking" a third toon thru the jedi quest sysytem here in the future.

[Ceras]

I voted for 5, which is enough for me to do:
1 Main
1 Crafter
1 Doc
1 Entertainer
1 Hunter

Should something less than 5 be selected, would the staff entertain the idea of skill point reallocation for existing toons?

[ZuraLuna]

It's not the amount of characters thats the problem its the amount of lots.

In live you had 10 lots per account no matter how many toons you had. If we need to limit characters instead because of coding then lets take it down to 2 or 3 characters because otherwise you totally bust the economy.

All you have to do is look at Basilisk or other servers-- there are cities and houses all over the place and people craft everything themselves because they have enough lots and toons to do it with.

I had 4 accounts and 2 had 2 precu jedi unlocks with 3 characters and 10 lots for each toon with a total of 30 lots on 1 account. Having that said, in LIVE you can have more then 1 account, here you cannot, so going to 5 is very restricting and doable, 2 would be overkill, I still think those who already have 10 characters should keep theirs and restrict new accounts only to 5. I also like the 90 day inactive accounts getting theirs taken to 5.

[KushSan]

the game was made to have 1char only

look at bas there everyone can solo everything because they have their uber builds.

with 1(max2) chars every player will become special in some way and will be needed by others!
this is what swg was designd for!,..... not having one toon for kraytfarming, one build for pvp and one for this and one for this,.. it just destroys the game

voted for 2chars^^

sry for my bad english lol

[MysteriousDD]

I keep seeing people talking about lots...not every every one is using all of their lots...I have 6 characters and only one is using almost all of his lots...and then one has a med house another a large and the last 3 have small houses...I want a 7th character because I formulated a plan for the toons I wanted to use when I joined this server...that being said I'm not doing anything with my 6th toon because of this poll...so until it is settled on what is happening I'm at 5 characters with one on the block for chopping...I voted 10 because that is what I was offered when I joined and I don't believe in indian giving...lol >:D >:D >:D

[VindiKat]

I think the economy would benefit from a character limit reduction, but 2 is too few. 5 seems like a generous compromise.

[GameDrifter]

I've played other mmorpg's and the more toons per account they give you the less important each toon feels. IMHO.... 2 maybe true to the original game and it certainly gave one pause to consider there play style options and what they really wanted from the game but there was always that one class or play style you found yourself excluded from because of the limits.. Now going the 10 toon route is just silly, When you can be a jack and master of all things do you really need to seek out others to achieve your game goals.. Most likely not.. The 5 middle of the road would allow for you to have a taste of almost every flavor and style the game has to offer and yet limit you just enough that you would seek to interact with other players to get your game needs meet. I personally would say 3 but no more then 4 toons per account would still meet those criteria 1) Let you experience enough game verity to keep things interesting. 2) limit just enough that you'd need other players to help you fill in the gaps of your game experince.

[Lekk]

I played pretty much from start to finish on live, and had 6 accounts for the entire time. I liked having that many characters, and used all of them for various reasons and none were just for "lots". Here, I have created all 10 characters for the simple fact that I wanted to have a city. My wife has her 10 characters as well for the same reason. She uses more of her characters than I do, actually playing the toons, not just citizens for city rank purposes. Out of my 10 characters I actually play 2 of them regularly, one is a main combat prof and one is my main crafter. I am working on eventually two more for sure, another crafter and a creature handler. My wife has a smuggler, a scout, a master doctor for buffing, an entertainer, and two crafters she actually is playing. We could both do with 5 characters, which is what I voted for, but my only concern is the city rank problem. While some have suggested that a reduction in player cities would be a good thing I tend to disagree. On live we actually had a full guild with 3 rank 5 cities. But on live the player base would support that easily. Here, so far there are not enough players to go around to sustain very many rank 4 cities, in order to have a shuttle which is my main concern. Having a player city was always a main feature of the game for me, one of the things I most enjoy besides PvP. I have no desire to join another city, and very much would like to keep our city the way it is, and I'm sure our other citizens would tend to agree. If the citizen rank requirements were adjusted to make it possible to retain rank 4 without having to spend inordinate amounts of time just trying to recruit citizens to maintain rank, five characters would be agreeable for me. With 5 I would still have the characters available to actually play the professions I enjoy. Also, finding doctors and entertainers for buffs can be a nightmare as it is, which is why my wife has her toons, not only to provide ourselves and friends with buffs but for the community as well. Again, five is good for this purpose, as well as allowing her to have her professions she plays for other than support roles. A two character limit I truly believe would be a death sentence for the server. Even at a five character limit we still have enough individual players to maintain our current city rank, but things change, and if some of our citizens decide to no longer play here, and the overall server population doesn't increase enough to be ale to replace those we loose and maintain our city, I would be greatly disappointed. We both greatly appreciate the massive effort the devs undertake which allows us the privilege to continue to play the game we love so much. I hope the character limit isn't reduced below five, and adjustments can be made for city rank requirements so it doesn't become overly difficult to maintain. Just my honest opinion.

[Niypi]

I keep seeing people talking about lots...not every every one is using all of their lots...I have 6 characters and only one is using almost all of his lots...and then one has a med house another a large and the last 3 have small houses...I want a 7th character because I formulated a plan for the toons I wanted to use when I joined this server...that being said I'm not doing anything with my 6th toon because of this poll...so until it is settled on what is happening I'm at 5 characters with one on the block for chopping...I voted 10 because that is what I was offered when I joined and I don't believe in indian giving...lol >:D >:D >:D

I am not sure what you mean by (INDIAN GIVER). Perhaps you could elaborate? I would truly appreciate it!

PS... I am First Nations or NATIVE AMERICAN as the USA would call us, or North American Indian, so I really am wanting to be enlightened.

[Niypi]

I played pretty much from start to finish on live, and had 6 accounts for the entire time. I liked having that many characters, and used all of them for various reasons and none were just for "lots". Here, I have created all 10 characters for the simple fact that I wanted to have a city. My wife has her 10 characters as well for the same reason. She uses more of her characters than I do, actually playing the toons, not just citizens for city rank purposes. Out of my 10 characters I actually play 2 of them regularly, one is a main combat prof and one is my main crafter. I am working on eventually two more for sure, another crafter and a creature handler. My wife has a smuggler, a scout, a master doctor for buffing, an entertainer, and two crafters she actually is playing. We could both do with 5 characters, which is what I voted for, but my only concern is the city rank problem. While some have suggested that a reduction in player cities would be a good thing I tend to disagree. On live we actually had a full guild with 3 rank 5 cities. But on live the player base would support that easily. Here, so far there are not enough players to go around to sustain very many rank 4 cities, in order to have a shuttle which is my main concern. Having a player city was always a main feature of the game for me, one of the things I most enjoy besides PvP. I have no desire to join another city, and very much would like to keep our city the way it is, and I'm sure our other citizens would tend to agree. If the citizen rank requirements were adjusted to make it possible to retain rank 4 without having to spend inordinate amounts of time just trying to recruit citizens to maintain rank, five characters would be agreeable for me. With 5 I would still have the characters available to actually play the professions I enjoy. Also, finding doctors and entertainers for buffs can be a nightmare as it is, which is why my wife has her toons, not only to provide ourselves and friends with buffs but for the community as well. Again, five is good for this purpose, as well as allowing her to have her professions she plays for other than support roles. A two character limit I truly believe would be a death sentence for the server. Even at a five character limit we still have enough individual players to maintain our current city rank, but things change, and if some of our citizens decide to no longer play here, and the overall server population doesn't increase enough to be ale to replace those we loose and maintain our city, I would be greatly disappointed. We both greatly appreciate the massive effort the devs undertake which allows us the privilege to continue to play the game we love so much. I hope the character limit isn't reduced below five, and adjustments can be made for city rank requirements so it doesn't become overly difficult to maintain. Just my honest opinion.

I agree with my husband here! I like variety, I like that I can pick and choose depending on my mood of the day (As a woman I have plenty of moods) which toon I choose to play. (Currently have 10 and all of them have been worked on to one extent or another). I would not mind the 5 char slots, if it didn't affect our city. We have a small friendly and fun guild and all of our guild mates are citizens, and when this goes through again like my husband has stated, how will this affect our city? We are not looking to expand and become a huge guild, just a few friends who enjoy each others company and our city. And like Lek has said, the devs and group work hard to provide us with a game we love and enjoy! and it is appreciated. I truly hope that we can come to some sort of compromise with these changes that are coming. My escape from RL is this game, and how I can immerse myself into what I truly enjoy. Keep doing the awesome work you do, and hopefully the changes will not greatly affect the player base.

[Roody]

Funny how most all that said that 10 characters would make them self sufficient so they wanted 5 but they would still be self sufficient by making a crafter, entertainer, doc, main and "jedi" character. So that means the other 5 possible characters would be mainly combat characters. Leave it how it is and if you are so worried about messing up the economy, don't make more than 2 or 3. If you go from 10 to 5 characters, thats 50% less armor, weapon, structure, harvestor, and anything else sales that would happen. Talk about a bad economy! Good luck finding the already hard to find professions...

[Teethgrinder]

My thoughts on this subject: -
2 Characters would lead to hard choices, I think finding doc buffs, entertainers and crafted goods would become much more difficult and harm server population.

5 Characters does lead towards some self sufficiency but would still require some inter-dependency.

10 Characters, players can become entirely self sufficient. IMO not really desirable in a social sandbox MMO.

I chose 5, because a cut to 2 would probably kill the server dead once it became difficult for players to get buffs and equipment. This server does not have the population of live servers nor the ability for multiple accounts (I had 2-3 accounts on live.) I would also support the drop in lots per character to 5 (enough to place a guildhall.)

[MysteriousDD]

I keep seeing people talking about lots...not every every one is using all of their lots...I have 6 characters and only one is using almost all of his lots...and then one has a med house another a large and the last 3 have small houses...I want a 7th character because I formulated a plan for the toons I wanted to use when I joined this server...that being said I'm not doing anything with my 6th toon because of this poll...so until it is settled on what is happening I'm at 5 characters with one on the block for chopping...I voted 10 because that is what I was offered when I joined and I don't believe in indian giving...lol >:D >:D >:D

I am not sure what you mean by (INDIAN GIVER). Perhaps you could elaborate? I would truly appreciate it!

PS... I am First Nations or NATIVE AMERICAN as the USA would call us, or North American Indian, so I really am wanting to be enlightened.

Indian giving is the act of giving something and then basically taking it back...it was a tongue and cheek joke...as for the main topic...I know that I run around with my Merchant and buy weapons for my 3 combat toons when they are broke and in turn when they have money and he does not they throw money at my other toons so they can acquire what they need from the economy at large...most of my purchases come from outside of my little group of toons and even outside of my guild...so I see others that do the same thing as helping the economy quite a bit...I would prefer not having to respec my toons just because i want to play ad different type of combat build when I can already have that build at my fingertips...I love this game...Live got me through 3 back surgeries...this time around it is helping me with dealing with my PTSD...and with that said the different ways that I play each toon helps with that...a different toon for different moods...just remember the TACOS & TANG!

[yemenmocha]

Perhaps we do end up at 5 or 2 as the magical number, but I fear that such a drastic cut up front would have unintended consequences that will gimp the current status of the server, economy, player cities....

You guys are doing a great job....appreciate your thought to touch base for making your formal changes. One of my favorite things about the server is how in tune you are with the members that play here.

I agree with this line of thinking and it ought to receive more consideration.

Also, if there is first a decision to make some sort of cut, then given the variety of answers above it seems to me that there might be a cluster of answers around a different number than 10, 5, or 2 characters. It could turn out there's a lot of support for something like 6-8 but we don't know that currently because of the poll.

Lastly, as you and others said, I think there must absolutely be something down about the multiple accounts per household. The reality of the situation is that the cuts in character slots are a huge incentive for abusing the multiple accounts option, on top of what is already taking place.

[Cynar]

It could turn out there's a lot of support for something like 6-8 but we don't know that currently because of the poll.

Could be. We placed those hard numbers up there for a reason. It's data for us to consider with other factors for the staff to review later. We as a server want active players. People who came and took us for a test drive 8 months ago and then left, well thats not a open-ended test drive. People who spend any real time with us shouldn't worry so much. Changes will be constant around here, but we tend to appreciate our loyal active people.

[erinstonetaylor]

I'm sorry if this is repeated above. There are six or more pages to this thread, so I may have missed it.

What about setting a date in the near future for all new accounts being limited, but allowing those already here to keep their toons?

I don't have ten, but I have a little over five and they are all part of a family. It would be distressing to loose any of them.

[beowulfchauffeur]

We could both do with 5 characters, which is what I voted for, but my only concern is the city rank problem. While some have suggested that a reduction in player cities would be a good thing I tend to disagree. On live we actually had a full guild with 3 rank 5 cities. But on live the player base would support that easily. Here, so far there are not enough players to go around to sustain very many rank 4 cities, in order to have a shuttle which is my main concern. Having a player city was always a main feature of the game for me, one of the things I most enjoy besides PvP. I have no desire to join another city, and very much would like to keep our city the way it is, and I'm sure our other citizens would tend to agree. If the citizen rank requirements were adjusted to make it possible to retain rank 4 without having to spend inordinate amounts of time just trying to recruit citizens to maintain rank, five characters would be agreeable for me.

I have to agree with this. I was very puzzled to read some CSRs indicate that fewer player cities on the server would be a good thing. The only planet which has, to my knowledge, reached its shuttleport limit at any time was Naboo, and I don't believe it is currently at that limit. Tatooine, Corellia, and Dantooine all have a few cities, but aren't at their caps, and Talus and Rori barely have any cities. Putting aside the issue of city abandonment, which seems to be something that is actively monitored and therefore not a problem, I just don't see how fewer cities is a desirable outcome currently. The server doesn't have nearly the population to even approach the galaxy-wide limit.

Funny how most all that said that 10 characters would make them self sufficient so they wanted 5 but they would still be self sufficient by making a crafter, entertainer, doc, main and "jedi" character. So that means the other 5 possible characters would be mainly combat characters. Leave it how it is and if you are so worried about messing up the economy, don't make more than 2 or 3. If you go from 10 to 5 characters, thats 50% less armor, weapon, structure, harvestor, and anything else sales that would happen. Talk about a bad economy! Good luck finding the already hard to find professions...

I'm also having trouble seeing an overall benefit to the economy from reduced characters. The only real negative impact I can see to the server economy from having 10 vs 5 vs 2 is that with more lots, one can gather more resources faster. On live there was (on my server at least) a hardcore resource mogul who would make deals to use other people's lots for harvesting, and ran a business based entirely on selling resources. That sort of thing is harder to accomplish here, because everyone has a huge number of lots which can be used on harvesters if they desire.

One claim that's made frequently in this thread is that having 10 characters allows everyone to have their own personal crafters, particularly weaponsmith/armorsmith. That's certainly possible, and it would make sense in the context of performing repairs. I honestly cannot believe, however, that anyone has an armorsmith/weaponsmith which functions solely for the purpose of creating their own gear, and has no vendor. If you've got the skills, the tapes, and the materials such that it's more viable for you to make your own gear, rather than run a buff session's worth of missions and buy what you need, why would you not sell to the public at that point?

And as Roody pointed out, it appears that a number of the 6-10 characters for people are combat characters - if a player is motivated to use 10 slots for self-sufficiency, they'll likely keep several "utility" characters around. I know in my case, character 6 is intended for PvP. I've already spent the credits to gear him independently of my other characters, buying weapons, armor, and food that I wouldn't have otherwise. I suspect that reducing the character limit will have a negative impact on at least armor sales, and possibly weapons as well.

[acer]

To the several people who've suggested that the economy will be hurt by reducing the number of slots because you won't buy 10 sets of armor or 10 sets of weapons, I humbly submit that you will probably spend about the same amount of cash overall.

10 chars = 10 suits of armor and 10 weapon loadouts
5 chars = 5 suits of armor and 5 weapon loadouts

We'll leave stuff like food/drink out of it for now.

The factor here is time. Decay is essentially a reflection of how much time you spend using your items. If you beat up a suit of armor in a week, and you have 10 chars that you play equally, you can expect to purchase 10 new sets of armor about every 10 weeks.

(These times are completely random, by the way, don't get hung up on it)

If you have 5 characters that you play equally, you can expect to buy 5 new sets of armor every 5 weeks, or 10 new sets every 10 weeks.

Reducing the number of character slots doesn't alter the consumption mechanics at all, it just condenses them because you don't have twice as many characters to spread your time across. Given a finite amount of time, you'll wreck the same amount of gear no matter how many characters you play, you'll just wreck it on different characters at different rates.

I don't believe that there will be any material impact on the economy in terms of number of items consumed via decay because of a lack of "extra alts I have to buy stuff for." I've seen that argument a few times, and I'm sure it seems logical at first, but I'm open to hear if people still think it applies.

[Centurionforce]

this had been talked about before and most of you know how i feel about this. I voted for 10. Not because I have 10, but because others do. Since this is not a beta server, people should not be asked to cut down their number of toons.
We have to ask this questions, are we really confident that the server wont lose a good number of people if they are forced to give up their toons? MMO players are always leaving games and servers for reasons far less important than this.
I dont want to see this place bleeding members because of this. Love this server too much.