Playerbase poll! pretend this is a modjournal, okay

[implying]

Hello, Exsilium! Just a quick poll, here. We're considering a revision to the rule that disallows doubles of characters in game. Here's the phrasing as it stands now:

Only one incarnation of a fandom character can exist in Exsilium at a given time. For example, if someone were to play a canon AU version of a character (say, Communist Superman from Red Son), then the place for Superman would be taken and could not be applied for by another Superman.

Essentially, this means that there are no doubles of existing fictional characters, although exceptions are made for well-known characters in literature, such as fairy tales, gods in mythology, and most recently, various incarnations of Sherlock Holmes.

The proposed change would be to allow any and all canon AUs (not including characters from different points on the same timeline). That would allow things like Tony Stark of Marvel 616 playable alongside our current MCU Tony Stark, as well as Star Trek TOS Captain Kirk alongside our current 2009 Captain Kirk. Note: there would be no cap on the multiples allowed, here. If a canon has 4 fleshed out and appable versions of a character (to use Tony as an example again: 616, Ultimates, MCU, Noirverse, that one universe where everyone is a zombie, etc…), then we could potentially have all 4 in game.

Please only vote once/with one journal! The poll will be open for a week, until May 31st, and results will apply to this coming app round.

Poll #13505

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 91

View Respondents

Should we change the rule to allow multiples of characters, or keep it the same?

View Answers

Change it!
57 (62.6%)

Keep everything as it is!
34 (37.4%)

Comments

[bloodyashes]

I know a bunch of people are concerned about massive duplicating for certain characters, so I'd just like to slip in here and say that that doesn't really happen. I'm another Tower of Animus player - for those of you who aren't aware, they allow player created AUs and up to three versions of a character (up from two as of a few months ago).

As far as I know, there is only one character at that three version cap, Dave Strider from Homestuck. The only other character I know of this being an issue with in the past is Link from Legend of Zelda - since Animus took each LoZ game as its own canon until the recent rule change, we did at one point (prior to my play) have four of them running around. That's still not nearly the "overwhelming number of versions" you guys are worried about.

So just chill. It's not going to affect the game that badly. //reassuringly pets playerbase

+1

[wilder]

Echoing this. I'm not at Animus, but I've been part of Paradisa for six years where we've had the canon AU rule the entire time and...well, it's honestly never been a problem. We've never had even more than two versions of certain characters at a time. And a lot of the time? They came from canons that already knew that alternate realities could exist (like in many comics), so it was far from earth shattering. The others were like "wow that's weird!" but learned to cope with it and got awesome CR from it.

So yeah, that's my own experience. It doesn't happen to most characters because they don't have canon AUs, and if it does? Well honestly it tends to work out more positively than negatively with getting CR or having an interesting time.

[invocation]

Nobody's really upset though, I think? Or unchilled, or what have you. I know I'm not, and everyone else who voiced their concerns seemed pretty calm.

Tower of Animus, if I gather correctly, is not the same type of game Exsilium is. We've had several mass cast floods, to the point where the app cap had to be put in place due to the sudden popularity of the game. It only just stopped capping out maybe a month or two ago, to put things into perspective.

So just saying, it may very well be that we'll get the overwhelming duplicates that other games with similar rules didn't get. No one really knows until it happens here, so being concerned about it isn't too unreasonable.