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How Multi-Boxing will turn AoC into P2W (Theorycraft)
These are just theorys based on what we have been told so far. How someone could use several accounts to basically have a huge unfair advantage over all players who do not. There by force other players to quit the game or buy 16 accounts. I hope someone at IS will read this and realize how much of a train wreck they will create allowing multi-boxers.
[Edit] Added housing exploit to the list
Had to res this thread because it got incorrectly flagged
So Lets begin,
Lets say joe has 10 accounts. Now this is only $150 a month and i see players in archeage spent that per week per easily.
Node Systems
Scientific
Well Joe has 10 votes ,that average 1 account peasant doesn't, Who need to keep the masses happy ? You just a few say 20 multi-boxers who control 50% of the vote in that node. They can then ask for what building etc benefit them and the democratic system in the node now becomes something more like oligarchy of an economic node.
Economic
Well Joe has 10 accounts funneling gold to his main so he can now afford to pay 10 times more then that single account peasant. Its fair he paid the RL money to have those extra advantages.
Crafting System
Well who needs to buy ore , pay for processing and craft it into something sell-able. Joe just has to have an alt with those skills. 0 overhead now joe can undercut those darn single account peasants until they give up then inflate prices to what he feels they should be. This will also lead back to controls economic nodes.
So by making crafters time / skill worthless joe has just effectively broken the crafting system. All for an extra $100 a month.
Caravan System
Joe plants CamreaBot01 - 10(there alts not bots bro!) in each node that connects to his own node or at strategical points along the road. he sits in the central point with his ganker buddies and waits to see someone roll by.. Now since joe has all these accounts on visible there is no need for dynamics like global chat/whisper he can see 10 min way and report instantly the location of that caravan. And team gank is off to wreck someones days.
What risk ? No joe doesn't need to risk his own resources he can already carry 10 times what that 1 account peasant can just form an alt train to move resources between nodes. no risk of pvp necessary.
Gathering
Joe again can carry 10 times what anyone else can so he gets that entire mitril node to himself, since he got it all he can charge what he wants for it!
Hunting -
Buffs last 30 min so joe just need to have his buff bot urr alt log in every 30 min to rebuff or keep them there for afk leveling
Power Leveling Service's
Its not power leveling thats my alt!
Housing System (per @teraricshon)
Joe used his 10 accounts to have 10 freeholds and 10 houses. The free hold joe now generates more 10X more resources then any other player and the houses he holds for so other players cannot purchase them , to game the supply vs demand system forcing others to pay more he can make even higher profits on the backs of those 1 account peasants.
im sure as we learn more we will see even more way multi-boxing will implement pay to win.
[Edit] Added housing exploit to the list
Had to res this thread because it got incorrectly flagged
So Lets begin,
Lets say joe has 10 accounts. Now this is only $150 a month and i see players in archeage spent that per week per easily.
Node Systems
Scientific
Well Joe has 10 votes ,that average 1 account peasant doesn't, Who need to keep the masses happy ? You just a few say 20 multi-boxers who control 50% of the vote in that node. They can then ask for what building etc benefit them and the democratic system in the node now becomes something more like oligarchy of an economic node.
Economic
Well Joe has 10 accounts funneling gold to his main so he can now afford to pay 10 times more then that single account peasant. Its fair he paid the RL money to have those extra advantages.
Crafting System
Well who needs to buy ore , pay for processing and craft it into something sell-able. Joe just has to have an alt with those skills. 0 overhead now joe can undercut those darn single account peasants until they give up then inflate prices to what he feels they should be. This will also lead back to controls economic nodes.
So by making crafters time / skill worthless joe has just effectively broken the crafting system. All for an extra $100 a month.
Caravan System
Joe plants CamreaBot01 - 10(there alts not bots bro!) in each node that connects to his own node or at strategical points along the road. he sits in the central point with his ganker buddies and waits to see someone roll by.. Now since joe has all these accounts on visible there is no need for dynamics like global chat/whisper he can see 10 min way and report instantly the location of that caravan. And team gank is off to wreck someones days.
What risk ? No joe doesn't need to risk his own resources he can already carry 10 times what that 1 account peasant can just form an alt train to move resources between nodes. no risk of pvp necessary.
Gathering
Joe again can carry 10 times what anyone else can so he gets that entire mitril node to himself, since he got it all he can charge what he wants for it!
Hunting -
Buffs last 30 min so joe just need to have his buff bot urr alt log in every 30 min to rebuff or keep them there for afk leveling
Power Leveling Service's
Its not power leveling thats my alt!
Housing System (per @teraricshon)
Joe used his 10 accounts to have 10 freeholds and 10 houses. The free hold joe now generates more 10X more resources then any other player and the houses he holds for so other players cannot purchase them , to game the supply vs demand system forcing others to pay more he can make even higher profits on the backs of those 1 account peasants.
im sure as we learn more we will see even more way multi-boxing will implement pay to win.
0
Comments
But...
There is nothing I see here that a coordinated guild couldn't do MO'BETTA and MO'FASTA.
If Intrepid does not include auto follow or let its code be usurped, never trust the client software!, then it is of minimal effectiveness to "multi-box". I would rather see how many characters are allowed per account before I can get behind limiting how many accounts I will be allowed to have. I like to explore different types of characters when I play complex games.
In addition, I believe it's these same tools of convenience...P2W cash shop items, auto-pathing (not the same thing as auto-follow, or auto-walk/run), LFG auto grouping, auto-looting, etc. etc. I thought that's what the MMO community was trying to get away from, and hoping to find in Ashes of Creation. I thought we wanted a "old school feel" type of gameplay, with a "new school" look. There may be a lot of other mmo's that allow mult-boxing. But, I thought AoC was trying to get away from what "everyone else is doing", and set it's own path.
Granted, multi-boxing may not be a prevalent occurrence, and hard to stop, but it's the principle of the matter. When I play an mmo, when I come across a player, I want to know that it's <em>that</em> player, and not a bot, or one person, linking multiple accounts to form an artificial group. And, I guess that's what it comes down to. Multi-boxing is just artificial, to me. I thought mmo's were about people playing a game with other people. Not programs.
Thanks all.
[/quote]
The difference would be a guild would be more then one human involved. In this case one human with the enough RL money can have the advantages of a guild per your point. So what your saying is Multi-Box = pay to win ?
@TickledPink
I am a sql developer by day i know plenty of ways to stop this. Same way bot/ scripting /hacks detection works with a few minor changes. I do hear your point because my lady games with me as well. So i would not tackle this issue ( if it were me ) from a networking perspective. I also think, Like bots this is one of those deals where players as well as the GM's as well as the developers have to work together to keep the a few people from killing the game for everyone else.
[edit] Step 1 would be getting IS to admit that multi-boxing = pay to win. Developers dont like to do this because 10 accounts = more $ then 1 account. Although usually those 10 accounts will cost that developer 100 players who quit because they cant compete with the Alt(Bot) Lords.
In addition, I believe it’s these same tools of convenience…P2W cash shop items, auto-pathing (not the same thing as auto-follow, or auto-walk/run), LFG auto grouping, auto-looting, etc. etc. I thought that’s what the MMO community was trying to get away from, and hoping to find in Ashes of Creation. I thought we wanted a “old school feel” type of gameplay, with a “new school” look. There may be a lot of other mmo’s that allow mult-boxing. But, I thought AoC was trying to get away from what “everyone else is doing”, and set it’s own path.
Granted, multi-boxing may not be a prevalent occurrence, and hard to stop, but it’s the principle of the matter. When I play an mmo, when I come across a player, I want to know that it’s <em>that</em> player, and not a bot, or one person, linking multiple accounts to form an artificial group. And, I guess that’s what it comes down to. Multi-boxing is just artificial, to me. I thought mmo’s were about people playing a game with other people. Not programs.
Thanks all.
[/quote]
RNG.
Drop rates to be more specific.
Drops are normally a compound of multiple items
All except one of which will normally be of use to a player.
So out of 10 drops they get a 10% success rate.
Bring in the mutiboxer with 10 accounts.
He is much more likely to get all 10 items and require all 10 items if all his builds are unique.
So he can recover all 10 items in 1/10th of the time... in theory.
But it depends how much time he has to be active vs how much time is standing around.
If its 90% standing around for any drop.....you don't technically need to be doing 10 things at once.
You simply operate the other alts in the lulls in activity.
TBH... unless you are scripting/botting I see no benefit over working as a team/guild/group.
So I would have anyone multiboxing on the high alert botting tests.
So that is a obvious p2w feature.
Think about it two node competing, one has a multiboxer the other dont, thats is some serius advantage over the xp gain.
If we are gonna compete for premium house or hoseholds at the beginning they will have the advantage.
At least thats how i see it, if i get ganked, its life, but if i cant do my things cause i am getting ganked by a multiboxer, even if i call my guild, we will loose some time in the race because of one single guy.
Heres an example of a multiboxer clearing a raid of 25-man with 10 accounts (i now he is higher lvl etc but thats a serious advantage).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF76i9Un63A
Imagine if he is targeting you.
1: keep them moving. Due to the follow system, they can't turn individual characters without moving their main account so they'd have to re-adjust constantly to where you are positioned or forget the idea entirely and 1v1 you.
2: take out the main character. They're usually easy to spot as they are the only character separated from the stack. Once he's gone, the others are unable to assist him and are no longer automated, so they must be activated individually, causing it to be 1v1 once again, even without you moving.
3: Use AoE (Area of Effect) to your advantage by smashing it down on them, since they are usually grouped closely together thanks to the follow system. It'll cause massive damage and hopefully kill them all relatively at the same time after a few rounds of that.
4: Use LoS (line of sight) to your advantage. If they are casters, run behind trees and cover, keep circling trees and whatnot. That forces them to either move up to try and kill you, repositioning them and giving you a chance to fight back, or they can stay there, in which case they can't kill you unless you go charging at them again, which is silly in many cases unless you can get behind them faster than they can cast on you.
A lot of games let you buy more than one account, depending on char slots people sometimes want more chars or bank space or whatever. This isn't too bad as they just log one or two chars in and do different things separately.
Multi boxing tools where you can log in 10 accounts at once then script them into doing things is pretty bad. And the worst as shown in examples here is the 10 identically set up accounts doing the same thing with one key press, this last one is just pure cheating and I've yet to see an mmo where this is allowed - usually if you screen grab it or whatever and report it then these people are banned. I don't worry too much about this, If the devs have said that's allowed then it's pretty much suicide for them.
The issue I guess is more what the OP described in having lots of accounts logged in for different purposes which is harder to detect I imagine, especially if there isn't a program being used to control more than one of them with a single key press but instead switching between them for voting or monitoring purposes.
Has anyone got a source of intrepids view on this? It's all very well them being on discord and live streams but I'm without a PC this week and have only the forums and YouTube sometimes, can anyone confirm? I'd really be interested also in their opinion. No one likes cheaters and I don't want to see essentially pay 2 win via multiple accounts in a game where economy etc is so important.
[/quote]
Unless I'm just overlooking something, I'm not sure that they really could. It would be really hard for Intrepid to know for sure if that was a multi-boxer or a couple playing together. Or a dad and his kids. Or maybe just a house full of college students. I don't think it would be worth the time or resources of the GMs to go after multi-boxers.
Botting on the other hand is easier to identify and I think that the majority of concerns people have with multi-boxing are actually concerns about botting. I think a person would have to go to extremes to argue that some guy is p2w because he is crafting on his second account while waiting for his guild to get ready to raid on his main. And the guy who has 10 machines all rigged up to accept commands from his main account isn't a problem simply by virtue of the fact he has ten accounts. He is a problem because he is botting them.
I do like the idea someone else had in this thread about allowing people to log into multiple characters on the same account. I would like that very much but I can see several valid reasons Intrepid may not want to do that. It would be cool if they did though.
A lot of games let you buy more than one account, depending on char slots people sometimes want more chars or bank space or whatever. This isn’t too bad as they just log one or two chars in and do different things separately.
Multi boxing tools where you can log in 10 accounts at once then script them into doing things is pretty bad. And the worst as shown in examples here is the 10 identically set up accounts doing the same thing with one key press, this last one is just pure cheating and I’ve yet to see an mmo where this is allowed – usually if you screen grab it or whatever and report it then these people are banned. I don’t worry too much about this, If the devs have said that’s allowed then it’s pretty much suicide for them.
The issue I guess is more what the OP described in having lots of accounts logged in for different purposes which is harder to detect I imagine, especially if there isn’t a program being used to control more than one of them with a single key press but instead switching between them for voting or monitoring purposes.
Has anyone got a source of intrepids view on this? It’s all very well them being on discord and live streams but I’m without a PC this week and have only the forums and YouTube sometimes, can anyone confirm? I’d really be interested also in their opinion. No one likes cheaters and I don’t want to see essentially pay 2 win via multiple accounts in a game where economy etc is so important.
[/quote]
It's allowed in WoW, Everquest 1 and 2, LotRO, should I go on? Multiboxing isn't as bad as you think it is. Please refer to either my long comment on page 1 or look up online "how to multibox" or "multibox leveling" and you'll notice that it's actually a pain to do many things, and the advantages, if any, are slim.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/how-multi-boxing-will-turn-aoc-into-p2w-theorycraft/page/2/#post-22358" rel="nofollow">Xephita wrote:</a></div>
It’s important firstly to determine the difference between multiboxing, having multiple accounts and having them all logged in at once.
A lot of games let you buy more than one account, depending on char slots people sometimes want more chars or bank space or whatever. This isn’t too bad as they just log one or two chars in and do different things separately.
Multi boxing tools where you can log in 10 accounts at once then script them into doing things is pretty bad. And the worst as shown in examples here is the 10 identically set up accounts doing the same thing with one key press, this last one is just pure cheating and I’ve yet to see an mmo where this is allowed – usually if you screen grab it or whatever and report it then these people are banned. I don’t worry too much about this, If the devs have said that’s allowed then it’s pretty much suicide for them.
The issue I guess is more what the OP described in having lots of accounts logged in for different purposes which is harder to detect I imagine, especially if there isn’t a program being used to control more than one of them with a single key press but instead switching between them for voting or monitoring purposes.
Has anyone got a source of intrepids view on this? It’s all very well them being on discord and live streams but I’m without a PC this week and have only the forums and YouTube sometimes, can anyone confirm? I’d really be interested also in their opinion. No one likes cheaters and I don’t want to see essentially pay 2 win via multiple accounts in a game where economy etc is so important.
</blockquote>
It’s allowed in WoW, Everquest 1 and 2, LotRO, should I go on? Multiboxing isn’t as bad as you think it is. Please refer to either my long comment on page 1 or look up online “how to multibox” or “multibox leveling” and you’ll notice that it’s actually a pain to do many things, and the advantages, if any, are slim.
[/quote]
I'm only really talking about having multiple characters all stood on each other using a program to perform the same action. When it's 4 shamans all right on each other so it looks like one blurry shaman. Or brightwizards in WAR focus targetting all controlled by one played. That never used to be allowed in any of those games apart maybe EQ1 I didn't play that.
Maybe I don't understand what example you are using. I know that you can use multiboxing programs in EvE *as long* as you aren't controlling all of the logins using single commands, i.e. Automating them.
I don't really have a problem too much with a program allowing you to launch multiple instances of the client and a lot of mmos do allow it, but if you start using them in some semi automated fashion which gains you an unfair advantage then most mmos I've played do not allow that.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/how-multi-boxing-will-turn-aoc-into-p2w-theorycraft/page/2/#post-22354" rel="nofollow">TickledPink wrote:</a></div>
All that is player side prevention and under the assumption that all multi boxers use the follow mechanic. I want to hear how Intrepid will stop it.
</blockquote>
Unless I’m just overlooking something, I’m not sure that they really could. It would be really hard for Intrepid to know for sure if that was a multi-boxer or a couple playing together. Or a dad and his kids. Or maybe just a house full of college students. I don’t think it would be worth the time or resources of the GMs to go after multi-boxers.
Botting on the other hand is easier to identify and I think that the majority of concerns people have with multi-boxing are actually concerns about botting. I think a person would have to go to extremes to argue that some guy is p2w because he is crafting on his second account while waiting for his guild to get ready to raid on his main. And the guy who has 10 machines all rigged up to accept commands from his main account isn’t a problem simply by virtue of the fact he has ten accounts. He is a problem because he is botting them.
I do like the idea someone else had in this thread about allowing people to log into multiple characters on the same account. I would like that very much but I can see several valid reasons Intrepid may not want to do that. It would be cool if they did though.
[/quote] So the real problem people have with multiboxing is the botting that usually goes hand in hand with it. I'm not a multiboxer..I never could understand how some one could have that much money to have multiple screens and multiple accounts in order to "win" but hey ,It's their money. Botting is something completely different and also something I usually correlate with node farming and gold selling. I hate bots. Not to be confused with macros. I love macros. I'm 48. I don't have the twitch abilities of some 18 year old , Monster energy guzzling teen.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/how-multi-boxing-will-turn-aoc-into-p2w-theorycraft/page/2/#post-22354" rel="nofollow">TickledPink wrote:</a></div>
All that is player side prevention and under the assumption that all multi boxers use the follow mechanic. I want to hear how Intrepid will stop it.
</blockquote>
Unless I’m just overlooking something, I’m not sure that they really could. It would be really hard for Intrepid to know for sure if that was a multi-boxer or a couple playing together. Or a dad and his kids. Or maybe just a house full of college students. I don’t think it would be worth the time or resources of the GMs to go after multi-boxers.
Botting on the other hand is easier to identify and I think that the majority of concerns people have with multi-boxing are actually concerns about botting. I think a person would have to go to extremes to argue that some guy is p2w because he is crafting on his second account while waiting for his guild to get ready to raid on his main. And the guy who has 10 machines all rigged up to accept commands from his main account isn’t a problem simply by virtue of the fact he has ten accounts. He is a problem because he is botting them.
I do like the idea someone else had in this thread about allowing people to log into multiple characters on the same account. I would like that very much but I can see several valid reasons Intrepid may not want to do that. It would be cool if they did though.
[/quote]
So the real problem people have with multiboxing is the botting that usually goes hand in hand with it. I'm not a multiboxer..I never could understand how some one could have that much money to have multiple screens and multiple accounts in order to "win" but hey ,It's their money. Botting is something completely different and also something I usually correlate with node farming and gold selling. I hate bots. Not to be confused with macros. I love macros. I'm 48. I don't have the twitch abilities of some 18 year old , Monster energy guzzling teen.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/how-multi-boxing-will-turn-aoc-into-p2w-theorycraft/page/2/#post-22358" rel="nofollow">Xephita wrote:</a></div>
It’s important firstly to determine the difference between multiboxing, having multiple accounts and having them all logged in at once.
A lot of games let you buy more than one account, depending on char slots people sometimes want more chars or bank space or whatever. This isn’t too bad as they just log one or two chars in and do different things separately.
Multi boxing tools where you can log in 10 accounts at once then script them into doing things is pretty bad. And the worst as shown in examples here is the 10 identically set up accounts doing the same thing with one key press, this last one is just pure cheating and I’ve yet to see an mmo where this is allowed – usually if you screen grab it or whatever and report it then these people are banned. I don’t worry too much about this, If the devs have said that’s allowed then it’s pretty much suicide for them.
The issue I guess is more what the OP described in having lots of accounts logged in for different purposes which is harder to detect I imagine, especially if there isn’t a program being used to control more than one of them with a single key press but instead switching between them for voting or monitoring purposes.
Has anyone got a source of intrepids view on this? It’s all very well them being on discord and live streams but I’m without a PC this week and have only the forums and YouTube sometimes, can anyone confirm? I’d really be interested also in their opinion. No one likes cheaters and I don’t want to see essentially pay 2 win via multiple accounts in a game where economy etc is so important.
</blockquote>
It’s allowed in WoW, Everquest 1 and 2, LotRO, should I go on? Multiboxing isn’t as bad as you think it is. Please refer to either my long comment on page 1 or look up online “how to multibox” or “multibox leveling” and you’ll notice that it’s actually a pain to do many things, and the advantages, if any, are slim.
[/quote]
I just wrote a long reply about the differences between launching multiple clients and when using automation to gain an unfair advantage becomes a problem and those mmos do have an issue with that but this stupid forum didn't post it. Sorry I'm not writing it all out again.
[/quote]
It's a problem the forum has with tagging quotes. Next time that happens go back to the page where you have the post opened and cntrl copy. Then post that only. It happens to me when I try to tag quotes.
In the end, I don't really have an issue multiboxing if there's no advantage in what that person is doing.
But honestly I believe if you are one person you should be on one character only at any time, it eliminates these grey areas. If you believe otherwise then cool that's your prerogative.
I would certainly hate to see couples or friends in a shared house punished.
[/quote]
Those MMOs have an issue with botting, yes, but not multiboxing. But something ,any people don't understand is that you can set up scripts with multiboxing to have them all do something with the push of a button. Technically, this is not automation. It'd only be automation if I hit one button and they all did an entire rotation (multiple things with a set amount of time in between to allow for global cooldown) without me having to push another button. I agree, automation is bad as well, since that falls hand in hand with botting, but multiboxing you have to push each button just like you would with a single character, except your scripts activate each box's button, meaning if you set fireball to your "6" button on all of them, they'd all cast fireball when you hit "6". That's not necessarily automation as you are still pressing "6". But if I had "6" activate a macro on all of them that castes fireball, wait 0.5 seconds, cast fireball, repeat until dead, target closest, repeat, then THAT would be automation, as I could sit back while all of my characters fireballed everything to death repeatedly with just pressing "6" once. I agree in that sense, that is something that could become aggravating for other players and shouldn't be allowed, but if it is allowed, that's something that could be countered the same way that I said before, as there is no macro or script that can make them all turn accurately and in time with one another, this they rely on a follow command.
Pretty sure no one wants to see that kind of thing in this game.
If an instance of it is reported and the devs say yeah cool nothing wrong here than they will lose players it's that simple.