15 Minutes Between Characters

[Dezadryk]

Any chance we could have the 15 minutes between characters reduced to like 5 minutes? I know a lot of the time I log on Dezadryk first to see if anything fun is going on, but often times I don't want to switch because i'd have to wait 15 minutes!

Anyone else?

[Krinata Almandar]

Sometimes its a pain waiting the 15 minutes, however I want to keep it as is. With our current player base that short a period between characters makes it fairly obvious who everyone's alts are.

[Zarrin]

I'm not decided either way. But to play the devil's advocate I will offer a few points.
1. Its up to the player whether or not they care to give such strong hints to who their alts are. If the limit is 5 minutes, no one is forcing anyone to switch in 5 minutes.
2. In a Roleplay mud of such a small, close community, we all pretty much trust each other to ethical behavior and to not act upon OOC knowledge of any sort.
3. Given point 2., after so long we mostly know who we all are anyway. With a few exceptions.

As I am undecided, I'm interested in hearing other reasons pro and con. Personally, I am leaning towards "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

[Ganelon]

I've got no real opinion on this one way or another either.

I will say though - it's annoying when waiting to raise a new imm.

I understand why it was put in place. But those reasons have never really held due to ethical behavior of the players up till this point, as mentioned above. We don't have people dying on one alt and grabbing their eq with another, or getting up to various other cross-alt shenanigans.

That's not to say such breeches won't happen in the future though. I think most likely it will stay for that reason alone.

The point about 'dead time' though is valid in a lot of cases.

I'd like to see more pros and cons on the topic too, but I think at the end of the day, it will come down to : Not a coding priority anytime in the foreseeable future.

[Cheiron]

Eh, Gan's a sweetie. Cuz I on the other hand people will absolutely use knowledge from one char to the other. These aren't bad people or really cheaters per se but let's say you are on Mistress Goodia Twoshoos and you were going to rent and go eat Captain Crunch and catch up on Judge Judy, cuz you were getting bored and you are in Cairhien anyway by yourself.

But then you hear that Dezadryk is fighting Arleve in Caemlyn and you think eh...the cereal is stale and your alt, Guardsman Mannie Swordformm is rented Inner City...why not jump on in 5 mins and lend Arleve a hand! Judge Judy would totally agree if she heard the case!!! I know I might think to do it without even realizing the wrongness of that.

I don't think the rule exists just to stop cheaters but also to stop accidental and perfectly natural/honest char transfers that also happen to be perfectly unfair. At least with 15 mins..the fight would have moved or ended one way or another, which makes the transfer far less prone to unfairness, intended or otherwise.

[Ganelon]

but let's say you are on Mistress Goodia Twoshoos

Stop revealing my alts!

[Mailei]

With such a small playerbase, I think it's even more important to keep your players around, and not off doing other things when they log on the wrong alt or log on an alt that has absolutely nothing fun going on. I would be completely in support of lowering the switch time from 15 to 5. If I log on and I get the feeling that I really don't want to do whatever it is that particular alt is supposed to be doing and think statting a new one or levelling up that one I started not long ago would be more fun...and then I hit that 15 minute timer...I usually don't log back in. I have to find something to fill the time and then I generally get hooked on that.

As for using knowledge from one alt to another, we still have the knowledge whether we wait 5 minutes or 15. I don't really see why it's such a bad thing to be able to say hey, there's an awesome fight going on, I want to join in but I'm on an alt that can't fight others , and then wait your five minutes and log on an alt that can and join in the fun, if it's even still going on. RP it as "oh I just woke to the sounds of battle! I should join in!" if you must. I haven't seen anyone on this game in my short playtime that has gone out of their way to be lame or ruin another persons fun. I think the majority of the players here are long time devotees and they should be given a break and some trust.

[Riley]

I'm kinda mixed about this.. I know I really don't care for having to wait 15 mins... that's 3/4's of an hour... which is a long time when you have someone that can't sit still for 3 mins without having something to do. I even have alts, which I probably won't even bother to play that much just due to the fact I can't really stand waiting the 15 mins. Heck the other day I was planing on logging into my alt 15 mins later well... that 15 mins ended up being hours later. Cause I had to go find something to do to fill in the 15 mins for waiting... At other times even asking imms and them saying I'll be on such and such a time... I don't like having to have imms wait for me... It's almost like a Doctor's office scenario... it's perfectly fine if a doctor will make you wait for hours on end, but when it's the other way around it's like OMG!

To help alleviate some of the pain players feel with the 15 min char change timer. Perhaps before we log into a char... if there could be a command on the main menu that we can see who is logged in at the moment.

1) You still have no clue what is going on in the realms RP wise.
2) You can make a better judgement of which char you would like to be able to play. Perhaps even be able to do more RP. Instead of being like oh crap... I need to RP with that person... log off for the 15 mins... And than when you get to log back in it's like crap... where did he go... and be stuck waiting another 15 mins to log back into your other char.
3) People are going to be able to figure out who you are after awhile anyway. Just from speech patterns.
4) If do away with the 15 mins... Perhaps even code something in or hold players accountable for, if you switch before the original 15 mins is up you can not take part in PKing activities until 15 mins is up. (Probably alot harder to code than the part of after killing a mob you can't log out for X amount of time)
5) Some people don't even care if others know who their alts are. It's a RPing mud, if your char didn't hear it first hand in says, or read it on paper. Your char doesn't know it. Kinda ties into point 3 as well.
6)Char changes from wetlanders - Aiel, or Wetlanders - Trollocs, etc. I can see where you'd want to put a 15 min stipulation on changing races. But if you are only changing within race... Really doesn't need to be 15 mins.

[Zharah]

Been mulling this over since the discussion was started.
I can live with the 15 minutes, what would be helpful is when you reach the login screen you see there are 6 wetlanders, 3 Shadow, 9 aiel and 3 immortals currently playing.

No names just number playing by race, so if there are no wetlanders on but 3 aiel I'd be more likely to log in or create an aiel.
Benefit would be that those who only play wetlander/aiel wouldn't see names of darkside but you'd get a general idea of where you'll find rp.

[Ishmai]

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