Kigan, I tip my hat off to you -- beautiful summary, and I agree with your conclusions ☺ especially the reminder that the game changes and shifts, due to the weight of the different player mentalities.
Now, back to the topic at hand.
I have seen sudden and dramatic policy changes like this in other contexts (e.g. forum moderation), always followed by a similar amount of drama. Here's a simple list of questions that will point the dev team in the right direction:
Do the changes serve a good purpose? Do they address current ailing points?
I believe they do. This thread is proof by itself: many, many comments talk about multiboxing and cheating, in the same sentence. At this point, it does not even matter if the players are cheating or not. The perception of unfairness and potential cheating exists and is fairly spread; it concerns most aspects of multibox play (faster leveling, easier boss killing, easier to kill npc bosses etc etc). It goes to the point of saying Ryzom can be "pay2win", a discussion that is 8 years old at least.
I will not address the point regarding "encouraging player interactions", because this change is insufficient in that regard. As long as a player can have one alt, they are already self-sufficient for most of their game time.So, overall, even if the wording of the announcement is incomplete, the change itself is (imho) good.
(My only gripe is that this change would make it more inconvenient for me to juggle materials between guild halls.)
Could the problem be solved in a more elegant way?
Perhaps.
Other variations have been proposed, e.g. to restrict alt armies only from "big fights" (boss mobs and NPCs, OPs etc). It seems to address the most instances where people would perceive unfairness, but it would shift a lot of weight to the enforcement team, to settle the arising disputes -- and believe me, they *will* appear.
And, on the other hand, it would prolong the suffering of those that do have armies. To have a tool and to only be allowed to use it when it does not really matter... yeah.
Impact on current user base: how many people are affected, positively OR negatively?
This is actually the crux of the matter.
Negatively impacted (from a gameplayer perspective, and personal play style) -- only the players relying heavily on multiboxing. There are not too many instances, and some already said they can adjust. As such, this is not a large-scale change affecting hundreds of people; it's just that the reactions are strong, especially since these players have invested a lot of time in their alts (and also reaped the rewards, I would say....)
Positively impacted -- probably the (small?) percentage of players who were actively frustrated by this behavior. Also, passively, those that were only mildly irked by multiboxers, but didn't complain much.
So, to my mind, the overall effect is a somewhat positive improvement in player mood, and at worst it's a zero-sum game. I assume this point is also contentious for some readers ;)
Impact on future user base: how many people will be affected?
Since multiboxing with more than two accounts is not common in Ryzom, I do not think the future impact will be significant.
I do not foresee many new players getting frustrated over not being able to run an alt army. They will see the CoC, shrug and say "oh well, one alt is ok".
On the other hand, since I do not really believe this change will increase inter-player interactions, I do not see much of a positive influence over the future players either. Perhaps only in the sense that alt armies stop being a contentious point.
So, again, just a slight overall benefit. Maybe.
What is the scale of the impact on the users? How dramatic is the change in their day-to-day activities?
The affected players will undoubtedly have to re-learn how to function with reduced firepower. Putting the genie back in the bottle is always difficult, but ultimately I don't think it's a game-breaking experience. Mourning the time sunk in leveling the rest of the characters may be more difficult to process, but, again, I hope people who trained alt armies have already reaped some reward for their effort...
That's it. Sorry for the long post.
Now, back to the topic at hand.
I have seen sudden and dramatic policy changes like this in other contexts (e.g. forum moderation), always followed by a similar amount of drama. Here's a simple list of questions that will point the dev team in the right direction:
- Do the changes serve a good purpose? Do they address current ailing points?
- Could the problem be solved in a more elegant way?
- Impact on current user base: how many people are directly affected, positively OR negatively?
- Impact on future user base: how many people will be affected?
- What is the scale of the impact on the users? How dramatic is the change in their day-to-day activities?
Do the changes serve a good purpose? Do they address current ailing points?
I believe they do. This thread is proof by itself: many, many comments talk about multiboxing and cheating, in the same sentence. At this point, it does not even matter if the players are cheating or not. The perception of unfairness and potential cheating exists and is fairly spread; it concerns most aspects of multibox play (faster leveling, easier boss killing, easier to kill npc bosses etc etc). It goes to the point of saying Ryzom can be "pay2win", a discussion that is 8 years old at least.
I will not address the point regarding "encouraging player interactions", because this change is insufficient in that regard. As long as a player can have one alt, they are already self-sufficient for most of their game time.So, overall, even if the wording of the announcement is incomplete, the change itself is (imho) good.
(My only gripe is that this change would make it more inconvenient for me to juggle materials between guild halls.)
Could the problem be solved in a more elegant way?
Perhaps.
Other variations have been proposed, e.g. to restrict alt armies only from "big fights" (boss mobs and NPCs, OPs etc). It seems to address the most instances where people would perceive unfairness, but it would shift a lot of weight to the enforcement team, to settle the arising disputes -- and believe me, they *will* appear.
And, on the other hand, it would prolong the suffering of those that do have armies. To have a tool and to only be allowed to use it when it does not really matter... yeah.
Impact on current user base: how many people are affected, positively OR negatively?
This is actually the crux of the matter.
Negatively impacted (from a gameplayer perspective, and personal play style) -- only the players relying heavily on multiboxing. There are not too many instances, and some already said they can adjust. As such, this is not a large-scale change affecting hundreds of people; it's just that the reactions are strong, especially since these players have invested a lot of time in their alts (and also reaped the rewards, I would say....)
Positively impacted -- probably the (small?) percentage of players who were actively frustrated by this behavior. Also, passively, those that were only mildly irked by multiboxers, but didn't complain much.
So, to my mind, the overall effect is a somewhat positive improvement in player mood, and at worst it's a zero-sum game. I assume this point is also contentious for some readers ;)
Impact on future user base: how many people will be affected?
Since multiboxing with more than two accounts is not common in Ryzom, I do not think the future impact will be significant.
I do not foresee many new players getting frustrated over not being able to run an alt army. They will see the CoC, shrug and say "oh well, one alt is ok".
On the other hand, since I do not really believe this change will increase inter-player interactions, I do not see much of a positive influence over the future players either. Perhaps only in the sense that alt armies stop being a contentious point.
So, again, just a slight overall benefit. Maybe.
What is the scale of the impact on the users? How dramatic is the change in their day-to-day activities?
The affected players will undoubtedly have to re-learn how to function with reduced firepower. Putting the genie back in the bottle is always difficult, but ultimately I don't think it's a game-breaking experience. Mourning the time sunk in leveling the rest of the characters may be more difficult to process, but, again, I hope people who trained alt armies have already reaped some reward for their effort...
That's it. Sorry for the long post.
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My home is always sweet Yrkanis..