Jason Liang
Arcane
I've been playing a lot of smaller online rpgs recently and thinking about the online rpg that I want to make someday. One issue that I've been thinking about for the past day is twinking. This of course is an issue historically traced back to the beginnings of computer online roleplaying, Diablo 2.
I've been playing a vampire combat rpg called Chronicles of Blood and a few days ago started a second character with a new account. While CoB restricts both what types of things players can trade to eachother and also has strict level requirements for equipment, I still realized that my new character, with help from my more advanced character (or help from a guildmate) could achieve a lot more than a new naked character. For example, it took my first character almost 20 levels to grind for a Raven Familiar servant (an universally indispensible servant) but the game allows me to trade extra Raven Familiar Words of Command to my new character so my new character doesn't need to grind Dark Forest needlessly for those. Another example is my new character can travel to Dark Oblivion as soon as he's level 11 and craft a pair of Path of Madness boots with Dream Dust from my old character, which is another huge advantage. In fact its such a huge advantage that clearly the best way to play this game is to create at least 2 characters - which is probably not the intention of the game developer.
So the issue here is this - even with severe restrictions on trading and item level requirements, gifting/ guilds can still give new characters an enormous, arguably unfair advantage.
On the one hand, twinking can get way out of hand and ruin the intended experience of an online rpg (see Diablo 2). On the other hand, prohibiting trading and level requirements seem like extremely artificial, clunky and heavy handed ways to enforce balance.
Any thoughts or solutions?
I've been playing a vampire combat rpg called Chronicles of Blood and a few days ago started a second character with a new account. While CoB restricts both what types of things players can trade to eachother and also has strict level requirements for equipment, I still realized that my new character, with help from my more advanced character (or help from a guildmate) could achieve a lot more than a new naked character. For example, it took my first character almost 20 levels to grind for a Raven Familiar servant (an universally indispensible servant) but the game allows me to trade extra Raven Familiar Words of Command to my new character so my new character doesn't need to grind Dark Forest needlessly for those. Another example is my new character can travel to Dark Oblivion as soon as he's level 11 and craft a pair of Path of Madness boots with Dream Dust from my old character, which is another huge advantage. In fact its such a huge advantage that clearly the best way to play this game is to create at least 2 characters - which is probably not the intention of the game developer.
So the issue here is this - even with severe restrictions on trading and item level requirements, gifting/ guilds can still give new characters an enormous, arguably unfair advantage.
On the one hand, twinking can get way out of hand and ruin the intended experience of an online rpg (see Diablo 2). On the other hand, prohibiting trading and level requirements seem like extremely artificial, clunky and heavy handed ways to enforce balance.
Any thoughts or solutions?
