I'd just like to say that I _REALLY_ don't think account=character would make anybody become attached to their character any more than they are now. What it WOULD do is drive people away from your game.
In every MMORPG I've played, I've always had two active characters that I actually played, and usually 1+ test characters to try out new things with.

If you want people to play more in character, you have to create more imersion. A very simple example is making severe penalties for death. Most people don't care if their character dies because it just means 5 mnis playing to make up lost XP, or paying 50 in-game gold to repair items, etc. If you lost a random equipped item from death (and couldn't easily change items right before you die), people would actually be careful because they don't want to lose the items they slaved over. Really though, I'm not sure that would work either since it would also drive people away (especially if they died due to lag/disconnect or a bug in the game or something else that wasn't directly their fault).

Most of the points above are both legitimate and valid. There are more discussions than one can count that deal with Casual (Mass-Market) and Harcore (10% of your subsciption) players, and what each "thinks" they want from a game. The One character per server tends to lend itself to a small "roleplay" community, and the 10% "Hardcore" community. In essence, this would be designing a game to fit the minority.

To your point specifically, multiple characters per (game/server) is necessary. Players want resources to draw upon depending on the situation at hand. CoH is a game that lends itself most to the casual mindset as well as those that become very attached to their characters (heroes), and still the players want something different to do now and then. I know many players that have sets of characters that vary in skills and levels, and why, so they can play with different friends, or re-experience the game they have to "pay" for from a different point of view/aspect.

MMO's lend themselves extensively to the ability for the user base to be social and interact with each other. This interaction is what drives these games, and keeps players interested, and paying. If I have more time to put into a game, and I outlevel (level based), or even advance skills too far (skill based i.e. SWG), I leave other friends behind. Having another character to draw upon allows me to have one character that I level up, and play however I wish, as much as I wish, and a second character that I play only with a certain set of friends, when they also have time to play.

In closing, you have two choices. You design the game for the smaller market (harcore players, and casual roleplayers) who could truly appreciate the experience you are attempting to design, or you give the larger audience what they feel they need, which is variety, and options, to experience the game how they choose to.

Heh, thanks for the feedback, I think I have nothing else to say :p

I'm probably a bit late on this one, but heres my take.

It gets boring only playing one character, and when you drop the account and switch to another character, you have to go through the whole level up progression again, which probably won't be that much different then the last time. Having multiple characters per account does not fix this fact.

However, there are a buttload of final fantasy games that demonstrate the ability to change class back and forth. 3j, 5j, Tactics. You could take advantage of that concept of on-the-fly class changing to mold the design of the MMORPG. Or, you could try a class changing system that locks out what classes are availiable. For example, the Squire class is open, but the Knight class won't be open until the player levels his Squire class up to X. The Wizard class is accessable through an Apprentice class. Then, the Templar Knight class is accessable when the Knight and Wizard classes are sufficiently leveled.

I got a much simpler reason why multiple characters are important to me: I got brothers. We like to play games together, but in our own style. We need our own characters.

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I got a much simpler reason why multiple characters are important to me: I got brothers. We like to play games together, but in our own style. We need our own characters.

I don't understand. You probably want to play together. Thus, you should have separate account.

Also, as a game publisher, I'm probably much more interested in you guys each buying a separate account, even if you don't want to play together.

Last, most games' terms of service actually do not allow you to share your account with your brothers. If one of your brothers does something stupid, all three of you will get banned.

Personally, I think one character per paid account is perfectly fine. Add perma-death, for that extra flavor ;-)

What about a skill system in game which let you buy, trade or what ever way to get your class. So say we can only use one character on a server.. or say 1 character on all the servers in total. We join the game with no class. Upon arrival we'll have to choose what class we want to be, I choose Archer. After a while playing with the archer I would like to try out something else. So I go back to the "arrival place" and talk to the NPC which 'teach' you the basics of the new class you want to learn. Our archer class was 11 and will stay 11 until we switch back to archer. The new class will be a subclass whether you like it or not. The subclass will level slower then our main class but it gives of course some advantages. For example if we were an archer (lvl 11) and barb (lvl 1) we're superior at Arching of course AND we have some singing talent. You could also choose if you want to drop the secondary class (this will then erease your level you accomplished with your barb), and choose for a different secondary class.

To improve the 'attachment' with the player should get improved with a similar system as I described above (I'm sure others will think different about this).

However having more characters available on one server DOES solve one thing. From my own experience; sometimes I would like to play my "alt" character because I simply get bored with my main because 1) I have no one to team with (if it's a team MMO or the like) 2) Have to wait for my armor that's being created
And so I can go on with a few more.
There's one more thing to mention, it solves (or can solve) your "Money issues" ;) How? Simple, you create a alt character and walk around town till you see some high level strong dude (or girl ;)) and say "Hey dude", (in l33t if you want to sound cooler :P j/k) "can I get some money, I'm broke and need to get some armor for my missions and bla bla" ;)

Anywho, I hope that's what you wanted to know, if not too bad :)

Theres also Tyranny of the Majority to worry about. In that the harder quests which require a party in order to play (which lets face it, its an MMORPG, the game was desired with parties in mind), you'll have groups that refuse to admit certain classes into their party because it doesn't serve the completion of the quest. The ability to change class and then change back means that every player will be able to play all of the quests in a game, which means you don't need to generate as much content. In a game with 4 classes, you get an at best 25% play rate for every player (assuming you make equal number of quests requiring a specific class to be in party). Maybe today I'll want to play that quest as a Mage, maybe tomorrow I'll want to play as the Theif.

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Original post by Inmate2993 Theres also Tyranny of the Majority to worry about. In that the harder quests which require a party in order to play (which lets face it, its an MMORPG, the game was desired with parties in mind), you'll have groups that refuse to admit certain classes into their party because it doesn't serve the completion of the quest. The ability to change class and then change back means that every player will be able to play all of the quests in a game, which means you don't need to generate as much content. In a game with 4 classes, you get an at best 25% play rate for every player (assuming you make equal number of quests requiring a specific class to be in party). Maybe today I'll want to play that quest as a Mage, maybe tomorrow I'll want to play as the Theif.

Of course there should be some sort of delay that should increase each time you change class. And btw, didn't I mention you start back at level one? It's no fun to start at level one each day. Leveling (reward, yes this is concidered a reward) is what we all do it for after all.

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Of course there should be some sort of delay that should increase each time you change class. And btw, didn't I mention you start back at level one? It's no fun to start at level one each day. Leveling (reward, yes this is concidered a reward) is what we all do it for after all.

Well, this is what I'm getting at. Its unlikely that the players would sign up for one account towards each class they want. Maybe two accounts at most. Giving then a fixed number of characters for each account meets the problem halfway, however you get the circumstances that a player might Twink his lesser characters, an thats Sequence-Breaking (a new term I just learned). The solution I'm suggesting is that you the designer can overcome this by designing the game to handle it. Record the player's experience in each class, while keeping just one master inventory and his on-hand inventory which will probably change capacity with each class. His progression in each class would do whatever it should do for that class alone, and the other classes remain unphased.

Its probably a bit like letting the player having as many characters per account as there are classes, however you'd be designing for that. Tell me which player would waste an account on the "Alcoholic Fatman" class in a game that didn't allow class changing. You open up a lot of design possibilities this way.