Hello. Well, there’s one quite serious problem - if you make combat in open area, so anyone can join it anytime or just pass by or observe it and then finish the last one etc. - it all makes the game more entertaining, but the problem is: multiaccounts/alternative characters (aka mults or aka alts). Every multiplayer game with open world (or not) is plagued by this problem, but there’s a solution to it:
When your character or party of characters encounters something, then you and whoever/whatever you encounter are moved to special zone where no one else can interact with you. This way it completely eliminates the vulnerability in game mechanics, where one player can just have over9000 characters waiting to be deployed, especially if the game is slow paced or turn based, then one player can even use them all simultaneously in one combat, what turns game into ridiculous massacre with purpose “who is the most inadequate and has more alts”.
And there’s no way to prevent players from creating many accounts/characters, because there’s simpy no way to detect it. IP? Mac address? Pffff easily avoidable. I’m myself an experienced exploiter/abuser/bug user, and obviously played many games ignoring and bypassing all these stupid rules created by naive devs and never ever got caught or banned, I dominated in-game markets with my army of alts, fought using these armies, and not only in MMOs, but also in browser games with tactical combat.
The only way to “prevent” it - make mechanic that makes an army of alts useless, but then there’s another problem - it’ll completely eliminate spontaneous player interactions, especially concerning PvP, what in consequence will make the game dull and boring.
There’s also one solution, but it won’t satisfy me: make game pay-to-play, so you have to pay for an account, it’ll discourage alting and will actually only make devs feel better if someone decides to create many accs, since it’ll yield them additional money. But no, I’m aiming for free-to-play. Btw good example is EVE online, it was pay-to-play monthly and recently turned into free-to-play, but with limitations, so these naive EVE devs made some rules like: you can’t run more than 1 free acc at a time… which were obviously bypassed already. I’ve created an army of miners there and got high income with my army of “free” accounts, and they all have different IP and mac addresses, so there’s no way to detect them, what clearly shows how vulnerable game becomes with open world and open player interactions.
So here’s the question:
What’s better: dull and boring game or vulnerable and stupid game?
For example: if it’s a game that is not slow and turn-based, but fast-paced and hectic, then how would you play an army of alts? I’m thinking of FPS games (Doom, Halo, etc.) or something like Monster Hunter (which I’ve never played but been sorely tempted).
Or: if players find it fun to command armies of alts — as clearly some do! — why not embrace that somehow? Can you make it so that anybody can command as many characters as they’re physically able to keep track of, and make that standard play? (How do you command all those alts when you abuse the rules on other games, anyway?)
I could imagine something where you create as many characters as you like, but each one starts out at Level 1, and (maybe, just spitballing here) they have permadeath. So you can create an army of Level 1 characters that mostly get wiped out in every battle, because you really can’t protect them all; or you can create just a handful of characters and focus on them more to keep them alive (game mechanics would have to make this feasible). Or whatever combination you like.
Basically, figure out what advantage alters get from using multiple accounts/client machines, and redesign the game so that anybody can get the same advantage from a single account/machine.
Well, yeah, for real time games it isn’t that critical, but I’m not aimed for real time games. The project in question is already in progress and a lot of work is done and it’s a turn based multiplayer game.
I’ve already thought about that and that’s what I did: my game is an RPG, but you don’t control one character there. Instead 1 team in a fight can have up to 6 characters which can be related to up to 6 different players. I mean, for example you can go explore world solo with your 6 characters or you can play with friend, you’ll use 1-6 your characters (the rest will stay in settlement/tavern) and your friend his N characters, where N=6-(your characters). This way there’s no reason to register many characters, because this mechanic already integrated in game and you can create as many, as you want. But the problem is that the game is too boring, no one can join combat in the middle of action or just see someone fighting at a distance and wait for an outcome to take action. It turns game into some kind of arena. It also completely removes “stealth” type of playing - you can’t ambush wounded or those, who are already in fight.
Unity helps me with that I make my own “bots” with unity.
Yes, that’s what I’ve done. But the game looks boring, so I’ve created this thread.
I make my own “bots” with unity.