Game Mechanics Server option: New/Dedicated characters only

[Crusher-of-Cities]

Watching Terraria on Twitch, I see a lot of people try to do open servers and request people only bring in new characters... then inevitably a character maxed out in solar armor flies past on a fishron mount, spamming their meowmere.

It would be nice for streamers to be able to check a box at server creation that only new characters are allowed. Of course, that would prevent rejoining... so ideally there would need to be a field added to characters indicating what servers they've been on (or maybe just if they've ever been on more than one) so that dedicated characters could rejoin, but also not just quit out, load up on gear from their own worlds, and return to harass people or trigger bosses and invasions just by existing. Or there could just be a checkbox on character creation that a character is dedicated to the first server they join only.

Of course, I can already see editors getting around this... but I'm sure it would solve 95% of the Twitch streamer woes.

 

[Baconfry]

Can't streamers just kick/ban the offending player?

 

[darthmorf]

If you use tShock (as most bigtime Terraria streamers do) you can enable Server Side Characters (SSC)

 

[Laluzi]

Sounds nice. I've never been to an open-invitation server that didn't get several people coming in to show off how awesome their favorite character is until someone finally kicked them.

Dedicated characters is also useful if you don't want people grabbing stuff from their own worlds, which they frequently do. Sometimes this is consensually agreed upon, or depositing extra materials, or even people just finishing up some business once the server goes down - if I was farming spider fangs when the host logs off, I'll probably go finish my haul on a different world. And if people want to bring in a vanity set, you can't really complain. But oftentimes it's people trying to sneak in items so that their character can be better - sometimes to show off, sometimes because they really do want to help out more, but the effect is the same. If I had a dollar for every person who 'coincidentally' found an Arkhalis in a sword shrine we'd already emptied, or cobalt shields after the dungeon had been exhausted, or an aglet in a chest that had already been looted... but at least then, you can tell they're doing it. It's much harder to spot people pulling in stacks of potions, ores, life crystals, or the occasional rare drop.

Not every playthrough cares about things like this, but for the ones that do, it'd be much easier to have this option than having to constantly confront people and get into fights when they inevitably deny what they're doing. For the sneakier ones, it'd save risking a confrontation when you might be downright wrong about their 'good luck.' I stopped playing random hookups because of this - I love multiplayer Terraria, but there's just too many people who won't honor a playthrough's rules. Again, never went to an open invitation game that didn't have at least one of the regular players continually sneaking in bits off the side.