CCP wrote:Zanz wrote:Is there no conflict-of-interest rule in these second accounts? Not trying to pick on CCP in specific but I'm curious about the precedent of allowing people to have active accounts in two nations that are IC participants in the same supra-national entity (Esinsundu here).
I agree with Zanz. When I pushed for multis in the Let's Allow Multis! thread, I specially urged that a prohibition on puppet-wanking (conflicts of interest) should be included in the arrangement. Some of us in the empire actually discussed the conflict of me multiing in an empire country, and I finally decided to go ahead with it because three other multiers are using it for at least limited puppet-wanking (Doc in Lourenne to expand Brethrenism, Tsar in Deltaria to play both sides of the Trigunia vs Deltaria war, and Akhenaten in the empire). Like Zanz says, I'm not knocking any of those guys because there's no current prohibition against puppet-wanking in the rules and I do think their multis are enlivening the game. But I do think if/when the arrangement is reviewed, that puppet-wanking should be given a close look.
Just for the record, my M.O. with the Talmoria multi is just to help Eagle pass a CP there, so I don't plan to stay long, and I plan to make my party and characters highly reckless so that they aren't too much benefit to any side in the game-world.
Excuse any typos, in a rush.
The previous 2 posts have been moved to here from the thread in the Moderation section.
At present, there is no specific rule against players "puppet-wanking" with their ASAA. However, there are some built-in limitations/safeguards, including:
- Moderators hold a discussion between themselves whenever a player requests an ASAA. If there are any serious enough concerns, such as that the player has a bad record in terms of complying with the Game Rules, or is believed to be likely to cause problems, then permission will not be given.
- players are only allowed a single additional account.
- the additional account has to be in a separate nation to the one their primary account is based in.
- the permission only continues for a limited period of time; I am anticipating few will go on for much over 2 months.
Further factors likely to reduce any perception of abuse are:
- every player is able to participate in the ASAA scheme on equal terms, so really there is no "special treatment" involved. The previous incarnation of the scheme, when only RP Team members could participate, obviously was more selective. For that reason, the understanding was that, for example, RP Team members could use their second account to participate in creating a Cultural Protocol, but would not be able to have it contribute to the two-thirds majority-of-players and two-players-one-month-each requirements. However, the new scheme is accessible to everyone on the same terms and so, for example, there would be no objection to CCP using his second account in Talmoria to contribute to meeting the requirements for creating a Cultural Protocol there.
- if a player is perceived to be abusing their privilege, other players have the option of simply declining to role-play with them. So to some extent, the community can self-regulate things here, without their necessarily being a need for more rules.
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It is almost inevitable that some ASAA players will to a greater or lesser extent co-ordinate the role-play they are doing with their two accounts. This should not necessarily be seen as a negative thing, of course; in fact, it could arguably end up greatly contributing to role-play.
But do we need to amend the rules, in order to regulate what players with second accounts get up to with them?
It is possible. When the ASAA experiment began, I certainly envisaged the possibility that the rules would need to be adapted as we went along.
The question is: how would one go about re-writing the rules in this area? Without wanting to sound critical here, I think one would need to come up with something a little more specific than "Conflicts of interest are not allowed" or "Puppet-wanking is banned"
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