OK, another EQ2 design decision I don't understand

[Arlos]

OK, with a game that already has limited replayability, since the first few levels are exactly the same, regardless of race/class/alignment, and the next several are only different by city/generic class, they have the following: You are hard limited to a grand total of FOUR character slots, across ALL servers. Not 4 PER server, 4 TOTAL, regardless of which server you have any individual character slots dedicated to.

Lest I be accused of making this up:

You have a total of four character slots. They can all be on one server or spread across mulitple servers, however you wish.

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Moorgard
EQII Community Guy

from: http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/ ... ing&page=5

Now, if you could start out as a class and see if you liked it, this might not be quite as bad. But you can't even try out the final class you want until 20th, and probably won't have a really good idea of how the class plays or if it is what you want until 25 or so. There's 24 character classes. This means people are likely going to need to delete multiple mid-level characters, play characters that they don't necessarily like as much as others (which lessens fun and customer retention), or they'll have to buy multiple accounts.

Now, my cynical nature about SOE corporate management (the money trolls, not the coders/devs), has me making the assumption that they're doing this cause they plan to offer, as a "feature" for X extra dollars a month, "MORE CHARACTER SLOTS!" or to include that in an expansion to goad people into buying it. That or it's planned to give more incentive to people to buy multiple copies of the game and multiple accounts. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't think so.

So, in any case, I completely fail to see how this decision is, in any way, a GOOD thing. Can one of you EQ2 fanatics come up with a GOOD reason why this would be so? Yes, I read the "increases need for interaction with other player tradeskillers", but that's BS. Unless their crafting system is TRULY wonky, you could cover just about everything you needed to supply a main character with 3 alts, I would think. That's assuming you actually care about tradeskills, which I know I never did in EQ1, and only do in WOW because it's painless. (I get all components I need in normal hunting anyway, pretty much, and making items is as simple as clicking a button.)

So, comments?

-Arlos

[Lyion]

I just don't find this to be a big deal. Each post you make here makes you seem more a WOW Fanbois, Arlos. I know you are tight with LOS and the Bliz devs, but c',mon! You haven't even played EQ2 and you are bitching about it.

Er, limited replayability? Since when? Does your vast endgame experience in EQ2 point you to this?

Sure, the first five minutes are the same in EQ2, which seems to be a big deal to you, but not to me, nor to most others.

I'm amused you don't like EQ2, have no interest in it supposedly, and yet come running over here to bitch about it daily.

I outlevelled 99.99999% of people in EQ, and I only ever played three characters on my account.

You can always delete one of those four characters and restart it.

Small beans. They can always add more slots later.

[Langston]

I think Arlos' point is that this is a drastic policy change from EQ1 - and he's surprised and leery of what it means.

If SOE is planning on SELLING the customer additional character slots - either in the form of a straight add-on option sale or via a teaser on an expansion - that's shady and very typical of SOE.

Not that I speak for Arlos, but THAT is what I got out of this post... and I have to agree that's bullshit.

[Lyion]

If they were planning on selling character slots, why would they give you 4? Most people won't use more than one or two, ever, I wouldn't think.

EQ2 is a more detailed and resource intensive game than other MMOs. I can understand the SOE dislike, but no need to yell four alarm fire when there's barely smoke.

Again, not a big deal, and my original point remains of why would this small detail bother someone who supposedly has zero interest in this game, and yet seems to want to attack it often.

[Adivina]

Math Equation:

EQ1 is not equal to EQ2. You can't base your opinions on EQ2 off of what you are familiar with in EQ1.

I don't understand where this rant about limited playability is coming from either. Have you even played EQ2 long enough to know all the zones/instances?

[Lyion]

Arlos hasn't played EQ2 at all. He has friends who work for Blizzard, though, so this may be more personal with him.

[Donnel]

I don't like it.

But I will be dealing with it.

I would be happier with 4 characters per server which would solve the tradeskill worries, but give me more options, alas, I am not a dev. :D

[runamonk]

I have a feeling this was done to curb the creation of mules and characters like you see in EQ1 where they create the character just to spam other players with. How many people created bs chars just to send someone in LoS a tell and hopefully get it in an unoriginal bastard or something?

I don't understand allowing only four slots, if it were 10 we would say the same thing -- Only ten? How the hell did they come up with that number.

[The Kizzy]

They want no mules.

[Harrison]

Doesnt bother me all that much.

[Adivina]

I don't think four was random actually, if you think about it it makes sense.

There are four main character types to the game, perhaps they came up with the number that way.

[Witty]

It does make sense, I've never even done more than 3 characters at a time anyways. But I just can't handle that kind of limitation.

[chanteez]

i had 7 on nameless (i liked to test out all the classes and occassionally play them for a break from enchanter) , 4 on tarew my original server which i still went to occassionally to hang with a sis and bro, 1 on pvp rallos to play pvp with other brother.

limit of 4 would truly suck for someone like me. who likes variety of classes to play for fun.

[Lueyen]

I am not a dev. :D

No but you generally have a good idea of what is technically possible/feasible and if the limitations are based in technical or financial reasons. So I'd be curious what your take on it is.

I've not played EQ2, the only technical reason I could see for this change vs eq1 is possibly storage space of characters ie if the actual file(s) used to define a character serverside is that much larger size wise then they may have done this to keep the storage space reasonable or comparable to that of eq1... which would be a wise marketing strategy.

[Naginataka]

I hate the limited replayability. The 300 or so quests availible per level after leaving newbie island IS NOT ENOUGH!

SCREW YOU $OE!!!!

[legeriun]

I don't think that saved characters cost much size.

items, levels, race, class, flags, skill levels are probably all done with integers and booleans, which are typically 16 bits for an integer, and 1 bit for a boolean.

I don't see eq2 having much more character info that is saved during downtime ... maybe now there are a few more integers for which class progression you choose.

let's say that your average character is using 100 more int values for storage for skill levels, and items than in eq 1(i think thats an overestimate). then thats 1600 bits, and 200 bytes.

now lets assume that 800,000 people play eq 2 (double what played eq 1?), and they each create 12 characters(high estimate). then the added storage space for sony is 1220 megabytes, or a little over a gigabyte.

200byte/1024^2 * 800,000 * 12 = 1220 meg

Who knows though, mabye they are doing eq 2 in a way that requires a LOT of offline storage for characters. I think its more likely that they simply don't want mules, or want to make money off multiple accounts/expansions etc.

[DangerPaul]

or want to make money off multiple accounts/expansions etc.

ding ding ding, we have a winner

Its SOE, anyway to fuck people out of an extra buck is what motivates them.

[Naginataka]

or want to make money off multiple accounts/expansions etc.

ding ding ding, we have a winner

Its SOE, anyway to fuck people out of an extra buck is what motivates them.

I agree. I hear they are even going to make people pay to play in astress test before release!

[Martrae]

Wasn't it Final Fantasy that had only 1 character and if you wanted more you had to pay?

[Langston]

I agree. I hear they are even going to make people pay to play in astress test before release!

Nope - that's FilePlanet that's making people pay to get 3Mb/s download bandwidth. But thanks for proving you're still stupid.

[Naginataka]

I agree. I hear they are even going to make people pay to play in astress test before release!

Nope - that's FilePlanet that's making people pay to get 3Mb/s download bandwidth. But thanks for proving you're still stupid.

Thanks for being too stupid to understand how marketing works.

[Tossica]

Maybe by limiting it to 4 characters they are somehow setting up some protection against lawsuits from people who spend every waking moment in a fantasy land?

[Naginataka]

I would guess they are trying to prevent the database search problems they had with SWG.

[DangerPaul]

perhaps coding it correctly would resolve that problem upfront ?

[Langston]

Paul.

C'mon...

It's Sony.