AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Alt-itis

Geez...finally! Someone made this post! Thank you Yoss!:)

I agree with Yoss's post...mostly.

Amia is a game world to me and as such when I think of a fun character I want to try it out. Come on who doesn't want to see a Barbarian SD with terrifying rage who can rage from stealth? Just me?

Or, I need a break from my main character. I play my drow too much and I find myself plotting ruin on that guy who took up two parking spaces with his fancy-schmancy new sports car in RL.

Or, I have a friend who wants to do something interesting so I build a character to help them out.

Or, I stalk a player and create a character that can interact with their current character...oh wait that was just for the player who is now my husband. And I got his permission to stalk him

I do my best to be available with my characters and hopefully that makes up for any grumbling directed at me and my itis.

Keep in mind, Yoss isn't saying that having numerous alts is bad, or not enjoyable. He's simply saying that if you're looking to be really involved with the large Amian storylines, that putting more time into a single character will typically yield better results.

You can create an alt and maybe never see them live up to their full potential, or... or... post the concept and let someone else play it, let a completely new player have a shot at it first.

I don't know about all of you but I think a lot of the characters I created weren't characters that I ended up wanting to play, they were characters that I wish other people had played. I'm not saying they were great but I spent time thinking about what I wanted to see in Amia, the sort of agitators that would have made things more interesting for me. Still would like to see, in fact.

Selmak wrote:

You can create an alt and maybe never see them live up to their full potential, or... or... post the concept and let someone else play it, let a completely new player have a shot at it first.

I don't know about all of you but I think a lot of the characters I created weren't characters that I ended up wanting to play, they were characters that I wish other people had played. I'm not saying they were great but I spent time thinking about what I wanted to see in Amia, the sort of agitators that would have made things more interesting for me. Still would like to see, in fact.

Make a thread similar to the build assistance one, but instead for character concept idea's!

That's seriously cool...

...I would post in a thread like that far too much.

Me too. Though I doubt I'd ever actually use it to make something. Character concept often ends up being a private matter for me, hah.

That said... there's really nothing stopping -anyone- from starting such a thread... So...

Thryliss wrote:

I just hope people dont get their hopes up thinking if they stay on their "main" more for a 5 year term that they will be involved in these Grand spot lights. There will always be the cream of the crop.

Well, I think the spotlight and recognition are two separate things. Spotlight is having people focused on specifically you. Recognition is what you get for your work, and there are varying levels of it. My main is enjoying a good bit of it lately after only being here for a few months. Might also be luck though, but I think something needs to be said about persistence. I kept coming back.

*Double post removed.*

jimbono1 wrote:

Selmak wrote:

You can create an alt and maybe never see them live up to their full potential, or... or... post the concept and let someone else play it, let a completely new player have a shot at it first.

I don't know about all of you but I think a lot of the characters I created weren't characters that I ended up wanting to play, they were characters that I wish other people had played. I'm not saying they were great but I spent time thinking about what I wanted to see in Amia, the sort of agitators that would have made things more interesting for me. Still would like to see, in fact.

Make a thread similar to the build assistance one, but instead for character concept idea's!

It's been done... sputtered and died.

It's been up for less than a day. I would not judge it so quickly.

Dieu_Le_Fera wrote:

... I would take it a step further though and say if one leads a faction/city etc.. then one should devote all the time to that character just to improve immersion of the city...

This is especially important for Drow. I played one drow pc from approx 2006-2010 religiously, so I will say I know what I am talking about. Without leaders in drowland, it dies. There are ups and downs, but when the leaders of houses and institutes leave or play alts, it dies. Plain and simple. If said individual gets bored or stressed or whatever reason they should have a second or even third in command to take the reins and keep rp going. Faction leaders should be there to generate rp for others not just hold post and disappear. My two cents.

Also, for me forum rp doesn't fill the gap for being absent. It kills the game. Arelith has notice boards and no rp on the forums is allowed. If one has time to post in a forum do it in game.

PS: I think this is the first time I have ever agreed with Yoss or Phaernun on anything.

soriano_ wrote:

Also, for me forum rp doesn't fill the gap for being absent. It kills the game. Arelith has notice boards and no rp on the forums is allowed. If one has time to post in a forum do it in game.

Agreed 100%. Forum RP should simply not occur. It divides the game and it gives people knowledge of happenings where their characters weren't actually present.

Also.. do you ever feel that people who churn out heavy paragraph after paragraph in their RP are being rude?

soriano_ wrote:

This is especially important for Drow. I played one drow pc from approx 2006-2010 religiously, so I will say I know what I am talking about. Without leaders in drowland, it dies. There are ups and downs, but when the leaders of houses and institutes leave or play alts, it dies. Plain and simple. If said individual gets bored or stressed or whatever reason they should have a second or even third in command to take the reins and keep rp going. Faction leaders should be there to generate rp for others not just hold post and disappear. My two cents.

Also, for me forum rp doesn't fill the gap for being absent. It kills the game.

Agreed! Though I admit that forum RP can be used to fill that gap when the player has to be absent from the game for particular reasons (business trip, holidays and such) so under such circumstances, it makes sense for the leader to maintain some kind of presence.
But when you're doing things IG and you never get hold of your faction leader because s/he's busy playing alts, but still exerts their influence via forum RP, that's when you know things have gone awry.

If you no longer have the drive to log in regularly and get involved with your faction, step aside! Put someone else in charge, as Soriano says. But in the drow example, don't be surprised when your second-in-command sends a kill squad after you when you return.

xordae wrote:

Agreed 100%. Forum RP should simply not occur.

I wouldn't go that far. Forum RP has its uses in filling the gaps in the narrative. If something big happens in a public area, forum RP can be used to let others know that something did happen, as certainly the npcs/travellers would be commenting on it. Personally, I only have an issue with how exact forum RP is. I doubt that any onlookers would remember the exact words being said by those involved - such accounts should take the form of rumors and at least being more innacurate, just to remove that feeling that any player knows exactly what happened despite being on the other side of the island when it happened.

Edit: Although, on second thought, I think I misunderstood what you meant by forum RP. Should that be the case and you're referring to what I now think that you are, feel free to ignore the paragraph above and replace it by "Agreed".

I see forum RP more for the people who prefer to write stories out, and useful for people who RP within different Timezones. However, I personally do not do much forum RP on a large scale such as Character Stories and the like, purely because it does not interest me or entertain me to write it out, or read other peoples.

Uneless completely necessary, I stay out of forum RP. Everything I want to say I do in game. Except for Noticeboard section forum is purely OOC for me.

Having your RP on the forums utterly defeats the purpose of having a server in my opinion. I'm not condemning some use of the forums, I lurk so much. But I can tell you that nothing important will ever be accomplished via forum RP. It will take a significant amount of in-game role playing and actions to affect the world. But they do make a fun way to break the tedium from time to time!

I do not see why people would complain about forum RP. Some people enjoy it. People play games to enjoy them. Leave people to do what they want, rather than what you want.

xordae wrote:

Also.. do you ever feel that people who churn out heavy paragraph after paragraph in their RP are being rude?

Not really, I just feel like they're making an effort to convey their own part of the narrative in an interesting, and engaging way it generally keeps them and I interested and I wish more people would do it. Short posts are fine, but single word things like "*Nods.*" followed by hitting the enter key just seem lazy to me. And I see plenty of it here.

I used to write much longer, more detailed emotes border lining on Noire, but playing here sort of killed that for me. I miss doing it and don't get to very often because if my posts take more than two minutes to write, the other party gets bored. So I can only play in a way that interests me when I'm with people that already know how I play.

jimbono1 wrote:

I do not see why people would complain about forum RP. Some people enjoy it. People play games to enjoy them. Leave people to do what they want, rather than what you want.

Oh I'm not complaining. I'm just pointing out that using the forums as a primary source of role play seems silly when we have this wonderful server to play on and interact with people on in an engaging fashion. If the situation warrants it, I'm perfectly capable of role playing on the forum. I just don't generally see a reason other than to give the narrative something we can't achieve with our text boxes in game.

I don't think anyone uses them as primary sources of role-play. It is mostly for story-writing, or as I said before, allowing RP between people who have conflicting timezones and such. It's also useful for people who are unable to log onto the game too.

Fail Threadmerge?

I don't play anymore but felt like confessing that a reason for my alt-itis was precisely that - not really wanting to get in too deep or significant with any of my characters. Whenever one of my characters was starting to get "too involved" with anything I would start experiencing this need to flee. I enjoy roaming far too much (from game to game, from story to story) to ever settle into one longlasting and meaningful position and while that may change with time, that's how it is right now.

I know that's not fun for others and that's the main reason I've been squashing any desire to return to game. I'm tired of disappointing people and the way I play (or don't play when I feel the need to focus on something else) won't be changing any time soon.

That said, I agree with Yoss's post 100% and to the rare person that can be dedicated and consistent - cookies to you.

jimbono1 wrote:

I don't think anyone uses them as primary sources of role-play. It is mostly for story-writing, or as I said before, allowing RP between people who have conflicting timezones and such. It's also useful for people who are unable to log onto the game too.

Check the underdark forums. I played a PC for three weeks when I first returned and saw next to no one in game yet there was plenty going on in the forums while seeing those same people on their alts on the other server. Too each there own, but don't try to pawn this rubbish off on me.

We're each entitled to our own opinions though.

I think there's a subtle relationship between a dwindling playerbase, altitis, forum rp and what I'm going to call "event chasing."

What happens is, people log in with their mains, possibly faction leaders, and find no-one to rp with. They then go and play with their alts, but maintain a forum presence, doing their best to keep rp alive. They organise events, trying to get people to play together. The event occurs, 25 people turn up for it like a herd of thundering elephants, and then 2 minutes after the event is over, everyone logs onto a different character, looking for the next big event.

What forum rp does that is good is enable you to keep events rolling when you can't personally be present. What it does that is bad is it allows people to keep events rolling when they are on completely different characters and not actually rolling any balls with their mains in game at all. Then when you are gameside, you're stymied by the "presence" of these absent characters.

RP that is based about the creamy full fat action of events does not give a rounded diet. You need the fibre of what goes on in the down time between the world shattering moments to build emotion and suspense.

bobofwestoregonusa wrote:

jimbono1 wrote:

I do not see why people would complain about forum RP. Some people enjoy it. People play games to enjoy them. Leave people to do what they want, rather than what you want.

Oh I'm not complaining. I'm just pointing out that using the forums as a primary source of role play seems silly when we have this wonderful server to play on and interact with people on in an engaging fashion. If the situation warrants it, I'm perfectly capable of role playing on the forum. I just don't generally see a reason other than to give the narrative something we can't achieve with our text boxes in game.

I guess I could do that, but my character does a lot of things entirely by himself. "If a tree falls in the forest..." etc etc

I think falling in love with a character is like falling in love with anything.

Try starting small. When you truly love someone or something, it's more than one big gesture and applause from an audience. It's all the little things in between that usually noone else can see. That's how you should love your characters. You have to find it for yourself, but when you do it's really amazing!

Magister, I just meant the player's RP that takes place there. I'd draw the line at notice boards, and even then the constant '*tears down this notice*' and whatever else should be barred from happening. For everything else, it would be better done IC. Every single character logged onto the server and doing something is a step towards a full server. And if everybody had this mentality, you wouldn't even *have* to evade to the forums because there would most likely be someone there IG to do this RP with you. It would be positively self-reinforcing as opposed to forum RP which, at this stage, is negatively self-reinforcing.

Having DM world news and plot progressions posted, as long as they're common knowledge, is fine. If the NPC population knows and talks about these things, the PCs should know, too.

My main beef with forum RP, besides ^ that stuff, is that it gives clear OOC knowledge. You are not in the sitation where one of your characters is there IG to witness and react to it. So now what do you do? Assume all your characters know it happened? Tuck it away in your brain and try your hardest NOT to metagame it? I've ranted a bunch of times about how hard and unnatural it is to act against better OOC knowledge. You may even end up being so good at not metagaming it, that you look over IC hints you might otherwise pick up and follow up on. It's just a bit messy and completely unnecessary.

I wouldn't want any of this baggage. I'd love to have tells, party chat, OOC chat, whatever, disabled in NWN. And IG matters to be strictly kept out of the forum, aside from things that are public knowledge.

Bob, that thing about wall of texts.. I don't mind them at all, but there's this rare breed of roleplayer who compulsively peppers his sentences with lots of filler. It ends up sounding very fancy and is a complete chore to read. :lol:

*sigh*

xordae wrote:

My main beef with forum RP, besides ^ that stuff, is that it gives clear OOC knowledge. You are not in the sitation where one of your characters is there IG to witness and react to it.

In a proper PnP game session, the GM will make sure your characters have plenty of opportunity to know about important information. People talk - my GOD do people talk - and maybe it's not as fast as CNN, but news of just about anything that happens in public somewhere will get around given enough time. There's nothing wrong with a player reading about events that happen in public and then 'giving' that knowledge to their character, assuming while you're not logged into the server your character is actually still walking around, gathering information or otherwise conversating with people about topics in which the character is interested.

Yossarin's right: you reap what you sew. Put in the effort and you'll be rewarded.

But,

To those with alt-itis, being in the "all stars" category (as Yos has so bluntly put it) isn't the be all. I found it rather irritating myself, playing a character everyone knew of by reputation if not in person, because that reputation sticks. Every time logged in you find yourself battling against that reputation in some form, so enjoy being the grey man while you can.

Another perfectly thought out and well phrased post from Yoss. You know I don't agree with you all the time but you got me 100% on this one. Bravo sir. Bravo.

Aaralyn and I are actually running a MMO Guild these days and we've gone so far as to cap the number of allowable Alts per player. It's done wonders to keep a active playerbase.

I've been pondering a question, after keeping up with this thread for the past few days. I don't really think of myself as one afflicted with severe alt-itis (I limit myself to two main characters), but I do have a bullpen of a small number of side characters who I play once in a while just because they're fun and a break from all the dramas that Kaithan and Robin have become involved in. As I contemplated whether I was the sort of player Yoss was referring to in his original post, it occurred to me to wonder:

If alt-itis is a bad thing, why does every relevant server policy favor it?

There is no limit to the number of characters that can be associated with any given CD key. Requests to delete old characters are categorically denied. DCs awarded to one character can be spent by any of the same player's other characters. The freebie rebuild process, which would motivate people to stick by an old character whose RP had for whatever reason just gotten stale, rather than just building a new character and scrapping the old, has gone from four per year to one per year to zero (though I agree that there were other compelling reasons for that shift).

(The only rule I can think of that discourages alt-itis is the restriction from any one player having more than one character as a leader of a recognized faction. But speaking as a leader of a recognized quasi-faction (Winya Council/Armathora), I can assert with some confidence that it's *really* hard to break that rule, even if you tried. The huge majority of players will never even need to know that rule is a rule. And even with it in place, it doesn't so much discourage you from playing as may characters as you can, it just limits the options of all but one of them.)

People will do what is incentivized. Why does the server incentivize alt-itis?

Do what I do and play no more than 2 characters.

Re lizzie: My personal viewpoint is that Yoss' point is exactly an incentive. People sticking to a fewer characters have a much higher chance of being noticed by the dm team and thus increase chances for dcs and quests suddenly springing up because we dms being to get an idea of who that character is. That's an incentive.
The DM team has nearly always maintained that people are free to play the way they enjoy and according to that dogma we have been quite wary about ever making more restricting rules about multiple characters. I for the record don't want to directly penalize players who like have a lot of characters. They will likely not catch as much dm attention compared to if they had sticken with a few characters but that's their choice.

So in short I don't personally think its ever going to breed a productive envoirnment to put a lot of penalities and restrictions on how people play their characters. They should be aware that doing some things might be beneficial to do but not ever forced.

Free rebuilds remains in my eyes a grave mistake I'm glad we got corrected.

Lizzie wrote:

If alt-itis is a bad thing, why does every relevant server policy favor it?

I think you make good observations, but I think this premiss is wrong: it's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing, either. It's just one possible way to enjoy the game. It's not important to treat your alt-itis if you don't suffer from it, but it's important to recognize its consequences. And that's what Yossarin's post is about. If you want to achieve fame, status and influence, you usually need to work for it. Before you point the finger of "favoritism" toward the "all-stars", you have to realize how they got there and evaluate whether you've put the same necessary work into it, yourself.

I wouldn't say Amia encourages alt-itis, but it's a viable option. Making it less so by restricting PC count or DC use is pretty draconian. You'd think that recognition and success is reward enough for sticking with one PC.

But then again, I admit not everyone achieves that. It's a fact that some people do this better than others; they have natural charisma, they know how to market themselves and their PCs, they actively get their fingers in everyone's pie, their presence in game draws others without ever going OOC. It's basic social psychology that some people maintain high social status and get noticed. It's a kind of favoritism, but the kind that can't be avoided. It's not about favors and underhanded deals between OOC friends, as some people want to suggest. It's that something about a person gets them noticed and remembered. Incidentally, this is also why so many DM PCs seem to be so famous and involved. They didn't become important due to the benefits of DM status, they became DMs because they got noticed. Because they have some personal quality that shines through and demands attention.

And then there's pure chance, like Yossarin said. Timezones, the wrong connections (to players that left and plots that got dropped, for example), what-have-you.

The point to take from this topic is not that alt-itis is bad and should be discouraged, but that a variety of factors influence your success and your own dedication and self-marketing play a huge role. It's still not a guaranteed highway to fame, because some people are just better equipped to deal with social relations and public image. Things as banal as good English and literary skills can be important in how you're received. Life isn't fair, but its inequalities are rarely intentional or nefarious, and you can do a lot to level the playing field for yourself.

Iron is correct. It isn't something we want to discourage because some players wear lots of masks and they enjoy that. However, if those same players get upset when their characters don't get noticed or they don't find themselves involved in a lot of bigger stuff, both DM and player-initiated, this might be the answer as to why.

I find that all too often, I get these urges to try out a neat build idea, then wrap a character concept around it. And while I play those builds, I certainly RP my way through them, but they never differentiate themselves and stand out from the crowd of alts I have.

My most successful character, however, works contrary to that. Voronwer started as a concept that evolved into a build later.

For those of you (us, rather, as I'm part of that) that try out different characters until one sticks, that's a fine distinction. Ignore the mechanics while you develop the character idea, then once the framework's done, look to see how best to represent the character.

Taking the time to develop a character concept and a build that has been posted in the build thread can save time and frusteration. If anything goes wrong, get de-leveled and go from there....but if a character gets boring for you, then I guess you have to start the process over. Best advise is to just plan each new character out more instead of just starting a new one because you are boared.

For me, I found that sticking with two characters is best. I have a mage-type character and a fighter-type character that satisfy all by needs, and I don't ever feeel the need to make a new character because I allready have tons of rp behind the two I play, and my mechanical needs are met thanks to multiclassing and a scrutinized build in hard copy form.

Suggested Steps to take before making a new character-

1. Find a character concept that appeals to you.
2. Write out the build that best illustrates the character.
3. Post the build in the Build Topic to check for errors as far as feat progression and such.
4. Develop a backstory for the character.
5. Retool your build concept or fix errors in the build.
6. Make the new character (but be careful to not make any mistakes upon creation).

Can people kill their alts or fad chars instead off letting them 'disappear'. Like the guy holding the reins in the guldorand reconstruction project - when he decided to leave and just vanish the rp around the entire town came to a halt.
If he had killed it off properly, somebody else could have picked up the torch.

I hate when that happens.

//sorry for using you as an example.

Somebody did.

Very_Svensk wrote:

Can people kill their alts or fad chars instead off letting them 'disappear'. Like the guy holding the reins in the guldorand reconstruction project - when he decided to leave and just vanish the rp around the entire town came to a halt.
If he had killed it off properly, somebody else could have picked up the torch.

I hate when that happens.

//sorry for using you as an example.

I'm very much planning on working that angle (reguardless of if he's dead or not) on Dominik when I can sit down for more then an hour again (spinal problems suck.) But if someone else grabs it, I'm quite happy with that.

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