Conflict escalation demands that for organizations to survive, they must match or exceed the efficiency of tactics used by their opponents.

If one roleplay kingdom refuses to use alts for spies because its metagaming, they will lose against a kingdom willing to achieve dominance through metagaming.

If they cannot find alternative equally efficient ways of gaining the same advantage that alt spies provide, and still retain their roleplay integrity, they will not be able to compete on the same scale.

This is the same reason independent organic produce growers have difficulty keeping insects at bay versus the streamlined produce farmers that make wide use of insecticides. By refusing to adopt equally efficient anti-bug tactics, they were relegated to the more expensive niche of the produce market (along with other factors).

Posted By p03t at 3:04 PM - Sun Dec 18 2016

I generally play a paladin type character, mostly tanky with some minor healing stuff, in other games. One thing my tanky characters always and forever in every game do id mine ore, and smith it themselves. I dont expect this game to play like WoW but if i have one character who is a warrior of some sort for a house, and another who is the house blacksmith it think it might be kinda neat. im not super familiar to the way they are doing things in this game, but it stands to reason that you wont be able to get to the more rare crafting materials without being able to fight your way to it. so im not sure how well that will work for having 2 characters.

All depends on how OPC scripting works.

If it works like some have been talking it would be entirely possible to script your gatherer to follow your combat character and stay out of combat as best as possible.

So while you would be in greater danger than traveling with a real player it might just be possible to run two characters at the same time assuming you can write or borrow a decent script.

For the high quality ores (or whatever gatherables you're after) you would have to control the gatherer for the "mini game" envolved in the gathering but you could put your fighter on a "guard" script and log in as the gatherer.

The person will be very busy.

When you say alt you mean two different accounts or one account with two characters?

Which is allowed?

As a noble I will definitely be making a second character on a second account, which can be considered an alt I guess. With the first character staying in the world and combined with NPC scripting I can see a secondary character as freeing up some time for yourself while your first character tends to the basics of their duties. Granted the second character will not be the main focus, but it will offer an option to both playstyle and visibility.

Posted By Barghest at 12:05 PM - Sun Dec 18 2016

If you fancy doing assassination or other illegal activities in your free time then it's much better to do it on a separate character. Otherwise you could sully your whole reputation etc.

Not sure what idiot downvoted you. Have a +1

I pretty much always play a light affinity character. I like being the good guy. But after all the posts about how people think NPC guards and laws and a justice system will completely prevent deviant gameplay without really understanding game mechanics, I'm considering having an evil alt.

I do like the idea of disguises in CoE since this gives a way for players to infiltrate organizations without the need to "metagame" an alt spy. Nothing cooler or hardcore than being a spy on your "main account." It kind of makes the use of an "alt spy" look wussy and lame in comparison.

I had a few guilds in MMOs that required recruits to take a picture of their character selection screen and share it to prove that they are not an alt or some kind of spy and this was a pretty effective tactic for preventing some spies.

Posted By Aeryn Suun at 3:38 PM - Sun Dec 18 2016

When you say alt you mean two different accounts or one account with two characters?

Which is allowed?

I meant alt on the same account but there is no reason someone couldn't buy 2 copies of the game and dual box.

I'll have my main on NA-West, but will roll an alt to have it on NA-East. Once I have my companies established here, I will try to establish EIC (in signature) on NA-East as well and make it a well known name ;)

Posted By Gilgilad at 05:30 AM - Mon Dec 19 2016

I do like the idea of disguises in CoE since this gives a way for players to infiltrate organizations without the need to "metagame" an alt spy. Nothing cooler or hardcore than being a spy on your "main account." It kind of makes the use of an "alt spy" look wussy and lame in comparison.

I had a few guilds in MMOs that required recruits to take a picture of their character selection screen and share it to prove that they are not an alt or some kind of spy and this was a pretty effective tactic for preventing some spies.

Sorry but this is and always will be a very ineffective tactic, easily beaten by dual boxing.

deleted dual post

Posted By SilkyBazaar at 9:21 PM - Sun Dec 18 2016

Sorry but this is and always will be a very ineffective tactic, easily beaten by dual boxing.

Yes, it can be beaten. But it does require more effort on the spy's part which deters some from doing it. That is why I said it was effective preventing "some" spies. Just because a lock can be picked by a skilled individual doesn't mean you should always leave the front door unlocked.