To set things straight, I don't think we ever stated that we don't want alliance features. Back in June Gremrod asked me to tell him a topic they could discuss in the podcast, and I said we would be interested what our players would expect from an alliance/conglomerate feature.

The result was that the majority of our players thought that an alliance feature would be premature or even unnecessary at that point.

Link: http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topi … iscussion/

Has the general consensus changed? Would alliances make a better game right now?

Ville wrote:

Takeo Prime wrote:

-1

alliance mechanics are for those that want to hide under the skirts of others.  The "Now they won't mess with my 2 man corp because i am part of X alliance" would be a terrible path to take.  the game is too small for making a super group to dominate the board.

Make friends, run with them, leave them, go another direction or whatever you want to do.  you don't need hand holding mechanics to do that.

If alliance mechanics are the path of least resistance then strong corps will just fill their ranks with cannon fodder for all the <5 man corps and the blob will be the norm.  The game is finally shaping up into some nice pockets of strength and diversity.

Get 500 active members then take another look at it.

Aren't you in an alliance lol?

checking....nope, just a corp, called WAR that has made friends with another corp, that of which neither require any kind of formal friendship mechanics.

-1

alliance mechanics are for those that want to hide under the skirts of others.  The "Now they won't mess with my 2 man corp because i am part of X alliance" would be a terrible path to take.  the game is too small for making a super group to dominate the board.

Make friends, run with them, leave them, go another direction or whatever you want to do.  you don't need hand holding mechanics to do that.

If alliance mechanics are the path of least resistance then strong corps will just fill their ranks with cannon fodder for all the <5 man corps and the blob will be the norm.  The game is finally shaping up into some nice pockets of strength and diversity.

Get 500 active members then take another look at it.

Inda wrote:

I dont want to attack, Scyylla what do you think what Perpetuum need?

I dont like plex but thats all, if with Perpetuum will succes maybe I will accept.
Btw, what I said dont think plex can solve the main problem, that also just a bit influx to game not more.

The major issue is the population. The main solution would be to advertise the game more to drive subscriptions up. This has been discussed in more then one thread so I won't rehash the subject..

Adding a slippery slope MT/RMT driver such as Plex won't do anything to increase subs. If you put Plex in the game now, I am sure the number of accounts would go up slightly as people add ALT accounts and pay for the subs via NIC (if anyone was willing to spend more RL $$$ to buy gametime and sell it for in game NIC that is). At this moment what does NIC really do for you that you need to make several hundred million by selling game codes? Answer--absolutely nothing! So, adding a Plex system will do nothing to increase the player base of the game.

Back to the ALT accounts:
Increasing the player base by adding alts that are subbed with a plex system is not growth. Those alts will actually hinder the market as players will be less dependant on others. Slowly but surely NIC becomes devalued as minerals sell for almost nothing (too easy to pay for a mining acct or 3 with NIC now). As minerals sell for nothing, mods drop in price.. Etc...Etc... Etc..... Before you know it, those alt accounts don't exist anymore because it is too much of a pain to get the amount of NIC needed to sub them. My favorite part--- it is insanely hard to PVP with 6 accounts so most of the ALTS stimulated will be alpha carebear toons or worse----corp paid for, gate scout accounts that collect EP.........

Inda-- I know it wasn't meant as an attack. You reserve that for Beta!

Every corp in the game has probably done account sharing in one form or another.

The fact is CIR did it for a substantial PvP advantage with early access accounts and that is in my opinion when it becomes an issue.

There are issues in the game like squad management and research that pretty much require account sharing unless you like sliding down a cheese grater naked head first.

The devs should address these issues. Really though pointing fingers is stupid here as game mechanics encourage account sharing in a couple different ways.

What CIR did was unfair but that doesn't mean that every single instance of account sharing is suddenly wrong. Its simply not completely batshit ***.

Ville wrote:

These are not concerns of the player base.  The majority  of the player base does not care about account sharing.  Only 5 to 10 forum posters who don't care how big of a fool they make of  themselves.

Seriously? Here's something to think about.

Let's say some corp decides to have 20 accounts they share among 50 or 60 players. Every time one of those players want to mine they grab the Riv Mk2 max skilled miner character and mine away for maximum return. Or whenever there is Pvp they grab the max skilled Ictus, Gropho or whatever. And these accounts are used by 3 or 4 people thruout each day. This corp would gain a clear advantage over others not account sharing and would quickly be able to build a stockpile of over 9000 fully T4 fitted mechs, along with unreasonalbe amounts of mineral reserves. They could in theory dominate entire areas of Beta while the single account player corps would have no chance to match. A clear and deliberate exploitation. Even this account sharing ALLIES would benefit from having such a strong friend to assist them. All unfairly. If they didn't share accounts, and were attacked by a small group of pirates and the Ictus pilot wasn't available, the battle may turn out differently.
Understand this?

Also if 60 people share 20 accounts that's 40 unpaid montly subscriptions to AC. That's a lot of lost revenue. Think about it. Finally, its simply a violation of the rules of the game.

Its not a small thing.