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I want to add some comments about the much slandered playing with an alt. Personally, I consider that a variant of solo play, and a legitimate and tolerated one. In fact, that playstyle is much different from "pure" monoboxing solo play as well as from playing in interaction with others exclusively.

For me, playing with a second character opened opportunities and experiences I lacked as well in solo play as in cooperative play with others.

When I approached towards my first melee master, namely daggers, I had already taken the services of my subbed alt Diwu as a healer, though she was fairly low on level (though growing fast) at that time. From level 190 on approximately, I developped the technique of training completely nude, as armor and jewels, where I fully depended on friends to craft them, were more valuable to me than some accidential injury or death. My chosen opponents were the cuttlers in the scorched corridor, until I grew out of the level 241 ones, tekorn daggers with max speed allowed me to bind up to 4 cuttlers at a time in circular, finishing them by enchants.

That technique was fairly unstable and completely depended on the reactions of the (then fairly low level) healer, failures occurred not seldom and were taken (mind that killing 5 cuttlers or so repaired the dp).

I tried the same with human healers, they regularly lacked the appropriate reactions and complained about the stress and the tension of such kind of high risk training.

Later, I developped techniques of roaming all regions of Atys, and trekking homins to every tp and zinuakeen and every other location on and below the bark. I even learned and learned to love to play with and to fool KPs. All that was possible in a team of two. I tried to practise the same in team with other players but experienced that those attempts regularly required a lot of instruction and coordination. Except in roleplay where we frequently rant I do not need to argue or discuss with Diwu.

I do in no way say that I deem it useless to interact in teams with other players. But when trying out risky stuff I am happy to be able to rely on my alt. I may communicate results and failures later.

So I consider slander against playing with alts intolerant, ignorant and pointless.

Alts can be good for RP as well. You'll occasionally see Gidget and I arguing in Uni, and I know I'm not the only one.

However, Gidget doesn't rely on me very often. She does her own careplanning when she digs, keeping me around simply to heal/rez her when she accidentally forgets to stabilize the node. She doesn't level much these days except for crafting (which I can't help with). These days, I'm mostly there in case she decides to go on a trek and she can't find anyone in her guild online at the odd hours she sometimes roams Atys.

I think that those who regard the use of alts as "cheating" are competitive enough that they invent their own rules of what is "fair", often quite different and more restrictive than the dev's guidelines, in order to make themselves look superior. While that may be well and fine in an arena or other battlefield, and there is no shame in being more skilled than someone else, doing all sorts of posturing about how you are superior according to arbitrary, self-made guidelines is ludicrous. Doing things the hard way is not a huge badge of honor worth bragging about in an MMORPG. If it brings you more enjoyment to do things all by yourself, then you are perfectly free to go without alts or guildmates. However, it's not "cheating" to do things differently than you would do them.

@Guarddog - Retrettably, I cannot think of a single word that means "people other than Guarddog". However, I can say that even a few lines of chat in Uni can be enough to rub many people the wrong way. You wondered how Daomei heard about you? You stand out enough that I think anyone who reads Uni knows a bit about you and has judged you accordingly.

I understand and respect where you are coming from, but disagree strongly with the abrasive manner in which you demean those who have different play styles than you. If you cannot respect those who do things differently from you, then how can we respect you? I feel sorry for the solo-players that get a bad rep as a result of your arrogant condescension.

I would add, as a player who has achieved most of his Masters solo, that those who manage to play effectively with an alt have my utmost admiration. I've tried it and it drives me nutzo just when I'm interacting with a storage alt. I can't imagine coordinating anything like attacking a mob or digging.

In a PvP situation where one player is using one or more alts and the other/others are not; I would call that a cheater alt.

That does not - or at least not necessarily - follow. In a 2v2, if one team is player+alt, the other 2 players, it depends on a lot of variables whether or not one side has an unfair advantage ("cheating") and which one it is. If you have full attention on a single keyboard/mouse/screen you will have a significant advantage, usually. And if 5 or 6 players assault a player with an alt, it is not that one who is "cheating".

I don't think using alts is cheating.

I never used an alt before merge. Sometime after the merge I finally decided to create an alt. Got all the remaining masters I wanted very fast, became much more anti-social as a result, could dig anywhere in PR without much difficulties.

It did make the game more boring for me in the long run, took a lot of the challenge out of it. I don't have an alt any longer.

However I'm one of those who can't be bothered to play an MMO solo style. Single player games have much more interesting gameplay, stories, quests, etc. Only reason to play an MMO for me is the player interactions, cooperative or competitive.

I feel like Ryzom definitely suffers a lot from an excess of alts. Many players who multi box are also very social and focus on building big active guilds. But a lot of players stay solo because it's faster to grind with an alt than other players, you may get more rewards from boss hunts, you can be solo and have access to the end game content like NPC armor through Chanchey hunts, etc. Just feels like there's very little incentive to build large guilds in Ryzom.

I personally feel like that's a downside. Too many solos and one-man guilds. I prefer to log on and interact with guildies and do things together with them, than log on and grind skills by myself. Gives the game more of a ghost town feeling when 90% of the guilds are tiny. Unless you're chatting in universe channel all the time, but again, that can be accomplished in better ways outside of an MMO.

Sure, you can level solo without an alt by sitting all the time to regen in between kills. But that's boring as heck. The game was clearly designed to be played in groups because of the lack of self heals.

Given that such alts would lack the reflexes and freedom of action that a player-controlled toon has, I would say that using alts for PvP would actually be a disadvantage in most cases. Running multiple clients on one machine means only one toon will be under control at a time, and true multi-boxing will either suffer the same issue of divided attention or require superior multitasking abilities and dexterity in order to even match the performance of multiple human players.

My personal definition of cheating involves having an unfair advantage. Being at a disadvantage is not an advantage, and being beaten by an opponent because they have more skill than I do likewise does not meet my definition of cheating. If they have the nimble fingers and mental agility to juggle toons well enough to match what a coordinated team of humans can do, then they have my respect.

So unless you are talking about a situation where one side outnumbers the other by a wide enough margin to overcome the considerable inherent limitations of alts, I cannot agree. I would agree that a 5v2 fight would be unfair, but in such a fight I would not care if those other 3 toons were alts or players. And if we are talking OP wars, well, those are WAR!

I guess it's a matter of personal temperament and what guild you're in.

Personally, I find levelling slower with Widget than with fellow Rift Walkers. Swapping clients is enough of a hassle and the risk of missing a keystroke high enough that it's easier to just teaming with a guildie than to risk getting wiped by one wrong keypress. And some guilds are big enough to offer the option of leveling with allies instead of alts at most hours,

Having guildies with a collection of craft masteries allows me to get q250 gear without having to master 20+ craft skills myself gives me more free time to do things like trek, hunt, help lowbies, or basically do anything but digging and digging and digging and crafting a little before digging and digging some more. So that's another incentive to either join a guild or make enough friends that you have an "unofficial guild".

You may not see the incentive to build large guilds, but having experienced being in a large guild and comparing it to the time I spent in a tiny one (3 players and 8 alts), I see plenty of incentive to have guilds large enough to have players at all level ranges with a variety of complementary skills in numbers large enough to do boss hunts without multi-guild splitting of the mats or be able to find a training partner with ease. At worst, I have people to shoot the breeze with while I'm doing an occupation run without clogging Uni with inanity and the occasional NSFW joke that would earn me a muting if I dropped it in Uni.

In the end, a lot depends on what you want out of an MMORPG. There are many "right" ways to play, and the only wrong answer is to disrespect others just for doing things differently than you would do them.

I am in a guild (The great "Grave of The Fireflies"), however, I still generally play by my self (or with myself) except when I want to level up in healing, because I NEED to be in a team to level healing.

My being in a guild doesn't preclude me from being in a guild. (if preclude means what I think it means)

However, I do not recall any dicussion of the skill it takes to play solo. There is no one else to heal you when you die. You have to be aware of the levels of the things you try to kill. You have to have an escape strategy. It is much more difficult when you are alone, and requires different strategy. You have to take many things into consideration that a team does not need to think about.

And for the alts... that is not playing solo, you are playing with yourself.

Just saying....

This seems to be a semantic discussion where each side is using a different definition ....and i can see both sides. To my eyes playing "Solo" means I am playing a single toon and that toon is receiving no "outside benefit".

When a team of 3 fights kinchers, and all 3 people (healer, tank, ele) are sharing the XP as intended, that is 3 individual players working as a team.

When I solo plants cause no one around to team with at my level, again "the entire team" is sharing the XP.

However, I also do understand and concur with GDs designation of the term "Cheater Alt", tho not in the manner which some have chosen to take offense. In youth basketball, a non-regulation height hoop which was commonly built for younger kids was called a "cheaper hoop" when played on by older kids.

The term is also used commonly in the trades such as "cheater bar" And, I am not taking about a club where peeps cheat on their spouses / significant others but a bar that is fitted on the end of a wrench or lever to gain more leverage. Cheater Stones are small stones placed in front of a boulder to assist in rock climbing.

When a toon is healed by an "out of team" alt, the main toon is not sharing the XP and therefore is "cheating" the alt out of theirs. This would apply to any situation where the main toon benefit is increased by the use of an alt as opposed to a team member where there is no additional benefit.

There is a similar discussion going on right now in baseball where Pete Rose's hits total has been surpassed by Ichiro Suzuki ... Ichiro's 1st 7 years were spent in a league where the level of competition was not up to par with MLB. Therefore, Ichiro's accomplishment .. at least at his point ... will never be considered by puyrists as equal to Rose's as the latter's path was the more difficult one.

I remember watching a player on Ari manage several alts (2 Digging / 2 CPing) and laughing as .... I play the game to relax ... controlling 4 tunes requires focus and that is not relaxing. In the case of 2 master digger toons and 2 CPers digging for the benefit of one toon's craft skill, I think the term "cheater alt" is again apt simply because it is descriptive in the common vernacular, not with respect to something unethical, but for a mechanism or tool that "makes things easier".

So, I am not saying that this is cheating as in an unethical "game exploit" ... I'm saying it's like using a "cheater bar" to power thru something you couldn't do (as fast) on your own. In that same vein, one "feature" I think one should be able to turn on / turn off is cats. Pre-merge ... cats were scarce and, at least for me, reserved for crafting. I don't fell comfortable having them applied to every skill ... I feel like I'm "cheating" myself out of time on Atys.

When I play a game like Witcher 3 at the 2nd hardest level, my kids tease me for playing the "cheater difficulty level". I see no need to take offense to the tease as that level is plenty challenging given the limited range of finger movement I have in my hands. My fingers are simply not capable of repeated and sometimes complicated, fast finger movements without a misstep.

Now, all that being said, I will never use alts ... out of respect for my toon. My character intends to earn his way thru the world w/o any advantages and without taking any shortcuts. That's a personal decision. As to what other players do with their accounts and their toons, that's their decision. Some will choose to make things easier, some will not.

Does a kid who goes thru college, relying parental contributions "cheat his way thru college " ? No, of course not. But i do think he cheated himself out of something ... the satisfaction one gets from accomplishing something on your own. As an employer, I would be more impressed by a the 2nd kid's accomplishment. And that's it, personally, I get more satisfaction from playing FF "on his own" w/o any help from alts.