I think this discussion has shown that a lot of the concerns being brought up are less about alts themselves and more about the current gameplay loop surrounding AFK farming, harvesting, and economy inflation. So I don’t necessarily think alts will create that problem though they can potentially amplify systems that already need balancing regardless.  If Aether ever did experiment with this, it could easily start as something heavily restricted and temporary rather than instantly becoming hell.     My main point was never that every player needs to suddenly run alts to benefit themselves — it was that Aether deserves more visibility than it currently gets, especially considering the amount of effort and uniqueness behind the server compared to others, who already use this method and have greatly benefited regardless of the stigma yal might have around it, (NOT ADVERTISING) I'd encourage a look into what i mean with those servers. That can be seen as a cheap way to promote the server, but what else can Aether do, we have the consistent updates, staff/community regularly contributing, with an owner/high staff actively involved with both gameplay and development. The quality and uniqueness is absolutely there, and yet why isn't it up there with those servers I listed? I don't think it's a coincidence that they use alt accounts. Though honestly, if the discussion ends up exposing bigger issues with harvesting, AFK culture, or progression balance, that’s probably still a productive conversation to have regardless of whether alts are ever allowed or not.

About Vetes's points. When I mentioned a server being a ghost town, I was referring to the example I gave with Garnet, during the period where they removed alts, not Aether. Aether has active players, but mostly inside bases/banks/forests actively or afk farming, that can be an issue since I've also noticed plenty of people joining asking where everyone is, but it's an issue outside of alt accounts. Like Jouaram said having an alt help with farming isn't very different from having an afk player to help, maybe this calls for another look into the farming methods or what to do outside farming, especially with your point about the servers economy. To me, that suggests the root issue is more connected to the actual farming systems and gameplay loops.    A lot of these concerns are things that could be adjusted through rules and balancing rather than reasons the idea itself couldn’t work. The economy is inflating and we don't even have alt accounts, which has happened in the past already.. and yea I see what you mean with harvesting for one. I'm already not really a fan of that system to be honest, could maybe use a nerf, not automatically teleport people there, set a daily limit, etc. A lot can be discussed and done, Jouaram has his own system for tagging alts, other servers already do that easily too and don't deal with people avoiding punishments or transferring their stuff to an alt to wipe warns, by having the alt and the mains warns be linked to each other, I can look into what tools they use.    I'm not complaining about the server being a ghost town during off peak hours, of course that's just how it is, but I'd argue against their on peak not being much better than ours, with my experience when I was for one looking through servers just yesterday to see which of the top servers allow alt accounts and keep a high pop, which it's pretty much a 9/10 ratio, I don't think it's a coincidence.     With Armana's point I agree with that completely, I personally wouldn't be using any alts I never have, and can possibly be discouraging to people who can't run them. Though I think that would only be a big problem if alts were really gonna be that meta, they don't have to be. That's also just a common thing across most servers, I've seen and even taken part in buying someone's alts off of them, or loaning alts to players who can't run multiple sessions of Gmod, these servers have come up with ways to balance everything out with alt accounts. Though, I can see why players and staff wouldn't even want to consider/deal with it.  

Personally I feel like this is very hard to regulate and also unfair for people who just don't have the ability to have alt accounts on Aether, whether due to money limitations, hardware limitations, or just living situation specific things. -1

Not a fan of the idea for a few reasons. I think it's a bad look to new players to see a list full of people yet when they join the server there's nothing going on during the off-peak hours, most of the time at least. We already have a lot of players join in asking where everyone is, and admittedly a lot of those players are also just minges looking to RDM, but I think it's a genuine turn off for a lot of people. Personally when I joined Aether I was also confused on why the player count seemed high despite it being a ghost town, and it certainly wasn't appealing. Also, in regards to the server being a ghost-town for a good chunk of the day, this is also the time that some people come on to farm money (usually AFK) and gain massive amounts of money with little to no threat of being raided. Adding the ability of being able to use an alt to increase your afk-able profits would be very unhealthy for the economy, which has already inflated pretty heavily throughout the last year. I do understand that some servers do similar things of incentivizing AFKing/allowing alts to increase their rankings on the server listings, but I don't think that'll increase the average active player count of Aether. For times I've been curious and tried other DarkRP servers it's almost always the same experience of it being a ghost-town irrelevant of the player count when it's off-peak hours, and their on-peak generally is not much better than ours, but it's also been awhile since I last tried another DarkRP server. If we get into the logistics of it, what perc said is very true as well. How many alts do we allow? Do we nerf harvesting other entities to account for alts similar to the nerf that happened to printers? Do we allow the alt itself to farm money and trade/interact with the eco through !unbox/etc? Do alt/main warns carry over to the other accs? Catching alts as a staff member as it stands is already a nuisance and adding restrictions and actually enforcing them would be even more difficult without additional tools for staff. The only way I see this working in a way that satisfies all these questions and potential issues is setting up a system that people can register their alt(s) so that the system can automatically handle the logistics without staff/Jouaram having to do it all manually, and even then we'd have to pray that people actually use it. -1

Interesting idea, but I'm worried about a few things. * Do we allow just 1 alt? Or can users keep multiple alt accounts to break rules with without actually ever reaching a ban or harsh punishment. * Will having an alt become the new standard? It feels like with all great things, it eventually just becomes the standard or apart of the grind. I would really hate to punish newer or less aggressive players who don't want to worry about an alt or just don't have the means. * I feel like we already have a big issue with AFK culture, and am wondering if this would only encourage this more. Many players feel misled by the amount of AFK players already online, and adding to that could be potentially equally as dangerous.