WARNING: Say No to Unlimited Sub Accounts

Be careful not to shoot the messenger, but we now appear before you with a warning you should consider and a potential Tale of Woe. Many potential Dust 514 players that are veterans of the PS3 have voiced their concerns with the prospect of unlimited alternate accounts with good reason, they have seen their devastating negative effects up close. Doubt this at your peril. With the recent F2P announcement (which was great news, by the way) there simply has to be a system where accounts are not only regulated and managed, but possibly also tied to a Master (the first account setup for Dust) that can be revealed online by running a simple search via a web application similar to what API keys in EVE Online offer.

In a F2P world extras cost you, and let's face it they should. Allowing unlimited alt accounts is almost stealing if you consider the model, you've already gotten game access and a single account for free. Users that want more should have to pay for it. Sometimes complete and total freedom isn't freedom at all, sometimes its CHAOS.


Sub Accounts: Dear God..not this again. That sound you hear is my screaming and smashing my head against a brick wall. So I guess we should define it just to make sure. Yeah I know YOU know..but the other guys just got here, so we gotta review. The sub account is ANY and ALL accounts that are used SPECIFICALLY on any PS3 (not talking about any other kind here) that are added UNDER the main account that allow for online gameplay. Yeah.. i know. No big deal.

Until you get a game like Dust 514. Originally, the idea to charge $20 per player was a good thing in my opinion because it would have been a step in the right direction toward keeping a single person from "playing all sides against the middle". Or from simply playing all sides. If a player wanted to have 3 accounts, the idea that he or she would pay 60 bucks for the privilege of leveling up three separate mercs three times as slow as a person with one merc was just fine with me. There would have been very few children or "horrible" gamers willing to waste an extra 40 bucks on griefing or team-killing or whatever it is they intended to do. You wanna do espionage and infiltrate some clan you are enemies with? Great..20 bucks. That right there should have filtered out about roughly 60% of the "grief" associated with online team gaming.

 Want a sample of the havoc sub accounts can reap? "Oh this? This is my main account where I level up..this is my sub account where i go in and fuck over this faction, for free because I can... this is my OTHER sub account where I go in and fuck over this rival clan, for free because I can." In fact I dare say sub accounts could be a standard mode of operation in the game. How mad will you be when the random ally next to you turns and jackhammers your (insert expensive asset here) followed by a "lol" while he logs off to other account to really enjoy the benefits of his treachery? Clans could deal with it slightly easier then casuals but look at how bad it is on BF3 forums.

The removal of the twenty dollar Cover Charge is a scary, scary thing my friends. Without a lotta dead horse kicking, I will repeat my mantra: "Sub accounts killed MAG". It wasn't the squad limit, it wasn't the lack of clan support. It was the sub accounts. As was pointed out multiple times to the Devs, what is the point of creating a "War" with tangible assets to be won when the person you just beat for those same assets can simply log off, log back in under a sub account and have access to them? TOTALLY defeats the purpose. Yes, yes... I understand that you want to "experience" as much as you can of the game. But sometimes in life, it's best to take what you are given and accept it. By having multiple accounts, any esteem or integrity that the game could have had, any respect that could have been gained for being "good" at the game is lost. The last game where the players actually had respect for the game and players who played it was BF2:MC. Everyone wants to be a winner. But in order for one group to win, another must lose. The inability of the casual console gamer to accept this simple fact caused the Devs at MAG to open the floodgates and thus... the slippery slope was started and the game ruined.

Sub accounts in a game like Dust 514 will be the worst decision made in console gaming history. Not only because the PS3 players will feel the effects, but because the game is tied by a digital umbilical cord to EVE, a game that has a solid fanbase, so you run the risk of upsetting a "world" that took 6 years to get to its current state. Not just the combat, not just the corps but the economy. Imagine the stock market. Now imagine every trader on the floor can operate as two other ghost traders and trade against him/herself or even against his own company in real time. Well Golly Gee! Two of me went bankrupt today but the third one of me broke a couple million! Now if everyone is doing that we run into two very big problems: One the market is fake, so it's only a matter of time until it collapses. But worse..if it ever comes back online, I can't work with any of you because I can't trust you! And that right there, big babies..is what will happen to Dust 514 if alts are allowed to run rampant.

I told you guys a while back: one of the main components of 514 that gets very little mention is the element of TRUST that will be required in order to operate."Awww Bassmeant... you're taking it too seriously! Again! As usual!" Well... I haven't decided how much money to put in the game. Or if I will. But the thing is, I can and it won't be that big a deal. I can't speak for others, in the sense that some kid may have worked REAL f'ing hard to save enough REAL WORLD money to dump fifty bucks in the game. And that fifty bucks may mean quite a lot to him/her. But now with sub accounts, the risk of that player having that fifty bucks turned into a giant pile of team-killed wreckage in a public room will be EXPONENTIALLY greater.

Nothing in any kind of tutorial will fix that. If a casual gamer makes the effort to try a game like Dust 514 and finds his investment totaled by some no-namer with 40 sub accounts, the damage to the game's reputation I expect will FAR surpass any ego-destroying ass-whooping handed down by a clan. Or even multiple ass whoopings. God forbid casual gamer levels up to something good but all along Johnny sub-account is leveling up his "grief" account right along with him/her. Then comes the glorious day when all that work pays off and that jet, tank, gun, armor or whatever it was that casual gamer was working toward finally becomes available..only to be destroyed in the first five minutes by Johnny sub-account. I'm not even sure which would be worse..to lose something you know you can gain again or to lose something you never even had a chance to get. Poor casual gamer. Sad panda face.

Trust. Huge issue in team games. Clans..non issue. That's why they play together. But then again..You got your clan together, you got more people, you got more people... oh you are just gellin' on your full friends list! But I ask you..do you really know all these people? Or is it just a case of  "Yeah this guy is dope! add him to the clan!" So now what? You gonna micromanage every single player that joins? Might have to. You wanna meet everyone, one at a time, as they join your clan of 1K+? I guess you should probably let them know at your job that you are now a full time clan owner...so here is two weeks notice! No but really, if the clan numbers are even capped at a hundred, that's a hundred people you better KNOW and TRUST. Sub accounts..the bane of our existence. There is simply no answer.

Well No. But: What i see happening based on this situation is gonna be an added invisible "P2P" element:

"You want in the clan... We don't know you. You really have nothing of value for us except you being more boots for us on the ground. Don't know you, want to trust you, can't though, with alts its too much of a risk for us. So what we propose, if you REALLY wanna join our clan is... a DEPOSIT." That's right y'all. If Johnny sub-account wants in on your party in his pitiful attempt to infiltrate, the smartest thing you can do is make him pay to join. "OK Johnny..Go and get yourself..I dunno $100,000 ISK (just an example mind you) and transfer it to the clan leader and he will bank it. If you screw us now the only thing you are REALLY doing is losing your deposit. Because once we catch you..and we will catch you..We will kick you out, and spread your $100,000 ISK around to cover the damages and raise the deposit amount for the next poor guy/gal who comes down the pike." And then, since Johnny sub-account has played his card, it'll be pretty hard for him to join another clan. Clans talk. Naming and shaming WILL happen. As far as I can come up with, beyond having a very stringent recruitment process, that right there should do two things:

1. Filter out the occasional bag 'o douche.

2. Find you some loyal players. they will either be good because they won the money or they are serious because they put the money into the game to have the money.

Maybe you set yourself a time limit. Play for three months with no issues, deposit goes back to you. Maybe not. Maybe it's and in out thing. You come in, you pay..you quit with no drama? Here is your deposit back.

really this part is on you. But as far as I can tell, the inclusion of sub accounts will bring so much drama, that after a few weeks of hassle, the deposit issue will probably come up on it's own. It'll be the ONLY way to really figure out who is being real and who is just farting around. Any player with NO money after a month or so should be a pretty good indicator that the player doesn't know how to play, isn't that good yet or is using a sub and probably should be put under probationary watch. OK, that's probably way too long. I tried to keep it short. For those of you who made it this far, please don't mistake this as me saying the game will fail. My hopes are like yours..that it has legs and walks for a long long time. But I think we have all been in the trenches on some of this stuff since before MAG came out. It's probably not as bad as I put it up above, but then again, you never can tell.