Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The ability to create several characters on a single account dates back to whenever and the purpose was always to allow one player to have several characters of different classes - so that you might be a heal slave for your guild for example, but when you're not needed you can create an assassin and have some fun playing the game for a change.

Thankfully EVE from the get-go got rid of the primitive system of classes, and is a game where anyone can do anything at any time(specifically, to learn any skills at any time). Nothing stops a maxed out miner to get fed up with suicide gankers and join a PvP corp - yes, he would need to learn the necessary combat skills first, but the same would be true if he were to make a completely new character with combat in mind, so what's the difference? You can only train one character per account at a time anyway.

Arguably, EVE still has stats that govern the speed at which you learn skills but the impact of these is quite minor, with only 33% training time reduction assuming (extremely expensive/impractical) primary/secondary skills at base 27 and the +5 implants. Either way, different attribute sets can be easily governed all by one character by simply using jump clones.

With game mechanics so heavily supporting single character play, alts tend to be used mostly for griefing(i.e. suicide gank/sockpuppet factory), metagame borderline exploits(i.e. join Amarr militia, make Minmatar militia alt and rake in cash/LP or mine on three characters simultaneously inflating the market or move to nullsec and pretend to be hardcore while you spend most of your time doing L4s in hisec alt) and general avoidance of personal consequences/responsibility.

Forcing one character per account not only solves many of the game's trans-mechanics problems, not only increases believability of the game/RP potential, but also opens the door for many further fixes which are pointless with alts present, like a bounty system that works or jail.

And from the economic perspective it means more cash for CCP because we all know there are people for whose one account with three alts is not enough, much less an account with only one character. Want more characters? Pay for more accounts. You know you will do it you hopeless nerd.

So I propose the following:

1. One character per account. If an accout has more than one character, the owner picks which character stays on the current account, and the remaining one/two get their own accounts. The newly created accounts get 14 days of playtime each; all the "normal" playtime stays on the main account.
2. To not diminish the potential for backstabbery and dirty play too much, Shadow Clones are added to the game.
- Shadow Clones are only available in pirate NPC stations
- Shadow Clones are very expensive
- Shadow Clones work like Jump Clones, in that you switch to them from your main clone, but cannot be used for jumping(you have to dock on the station with the Shadow Clone to use it)
- Like other clones, you keep all your skills when changing to a Shadow Clone.
- Shadow Clones are completely randomly generated characters, down to the name. They can be drastically different to your normal clone(indeed, most of the time they won't even be of the same race). They cannot neural remap, use implants/boosters, and you don't gain skillpoints when in a Shadow Clone(you have to pause the skill queue before getting in one like with Jump Clones and you cannot un-pause it in a Shadow Clone).
- Shadow Clones last 24 hours after which they automatically die and you go back to your main clone back at the pirate station. You can also terminate a Shadow Clone yourself and go back to your main body whenver you wish.

I propose the following!

*Unzips pants*

Wall of text and not much in it. Exactly why are alts a problem to you? And why should someone sacrifice an alt that they might have been training for the last 9 years?

I have fun playing healers. Your argument is invalid.

1: Right, only forcing people who have taken possibly years of training off of their main to take another sub. Spiffy.

2: It cares about complexity when the complexity is garbage. Not to **** fling, but complexity is good - needless complexity in place of an already working system is bad.

Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!

I am fascinated by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your brochure.

You leave my emergency forum alt alone. I need that in case I get banned. Again.

I had a good laugh at that, thank you

@Op - No.