[quote quote=22366]<blockquote> <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.
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As you said, Ayren, there is a difference between what I term as "multi-boxing", and just having multiple accounts, running individually. My idea of multi-boxing are multiple accounts, synched/linked by a program, to take coammands from the "main toon". I consider that a form of botting, and am personally against power gaming of any kind.
[quote quote=22370]<blockquote> <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> </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.
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Leptos, if the gains of multi-boxing (botting), are so slim, then once again, why do it? It seems that the investment wouldn't equal te return, according to your posts. However, whether the gains are big, or small, it'still an advantage granted by programming, as opposed to pure player skill. And, that's weak.
Also, all that advice about how to beat a "boxer" in PvP, are all the same things someone would do if it was just 1v1, and not 1vMultiple. Juking, LoS, etc etc. are things people do anyway, without having to worry that if they make a mistake, it's game over, after getting hit by multiple attacks at once.
If botting programs are not allowed in AoC, then terrific!
[quote quote=22393]<blockquote> <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-22388" rel="nofollow">Xephita wrote:</a></div> 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.
</blockquote> 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.
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Whether the buttons are "synched" to be pressed manually, or "synched" to a program to fire automatically, it all falls under the "botting" umbrella in my book.
If someone wants to have multiple accounts, and run those multiple accounts from different computer, individually, then by all means, have a blast. But, once you start synching those multiple accounts to follow simplified commands, at the same time, that's a foul in my book. Just because it may be allowed in other games, doesn't mean it's good. Just means no one cares.
[quote quote=22399]Leptos, I’ve been playing mmos for 15 years I’ve seen it all so believe me I understand what you are saying. But at the end of the day no matter how you justify it, be it a script or a bot program or if it’s counterable or not. using the scenario where one player is making more than one in game character do the same thing at the same time it’s cheating and I’m pretty sure that any sane GM or moderator would have an issue with that.
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.
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I completely agree, I don't want to see this happening in this game either. I'm just here to let people know that while yes, multiboxing is giving an unfair advantage to people who pay to have multiple accounts in some situations, those people are also being given an unfair disadvantage that they are willing to take. Let's think of it in a different way, since i've tried to explain logically before. Let's make up a scenario.
Let's say that there's a man, let's call him Jim since we've already used Joe. Jim is alone on a beach, and he's not getting help from anyone. He has a house, basic tools, and a fishing rod. Everyday Jim sits on the beach fishing to supply himself with enough food to last him for that day. After he fishes up his few fish, he goes and collects firewood, just enough to last him for the chilly nights. Well, Jim has his routine going quite nicely, and nothing ever changes. He's content. Well, let's say we are overlords in this situation and we give Jim a wife. While he may be happy that he's no longer alone and that he can get some help, there's really not much she can do except help him with his routine. So, Jim and his wife go fishing together. Since the fish is a variable that Jim can't control, the rate at which Jim and his wife catches fish is the same as if Jim was fishing alone, so it takes Jim longer to catch enough fish for him and his wife to both eat off of for the day. In the meantime, after realizing it's not going any faster, Jim tells his wife to go look for firewood so that they can get a headstart. She does this, and they meet back at the house when they are finished. While it cut Jim's time in half to go get firewood, it doubled his time to get fish for his wife and himself. So, things go as normal, Jim catching fish while his wife gets firewood, their new routine not taking any longer, and on some days it taking less time because it's two of them. Well, let's say that Jim and his wife decide to have kids. Well, they get twins. This is a blessing because now there's four of them, and when the kids get old enough they can help out and make things easier on their father, Jim. Well, it's the same situation as before with his wife, where the kids come in to help with fishing, but the fish don't want to bite at a different rate, so they really aren't doing any good. So Jim says to the kids "Go help your mother collect firewood." The kids oblige and go to help Jim's wife while Jim sits on the beach and fishes. Now he has to provide enough fish for his wife and two children, as well as himself. It takes him hours to do this. Meanwhile, because firewood is a variable that's everywhere rather than just in one place like the fish, the children and their mother finish collecting firewood very quickly and wait for Jim back at the house. Jim, on the other hand, has had his time fishing quadrupled from when he was alone, and he now must work harder to provide for his family. However, he does it happily, knowing that his hard work is going to pay off, and someday his kids will be big and strong like their father.
The whole idea of this story was to explain what it's like going from playing one character to playing multiple. You have to provide for each character like they are family, and if we compare the fish to the valuable loot, like armor, weapons, etc. then the drop rate for them doesn't change. Jim can't make them drop faster, he just has to live with it and keep grinding out until he can get his entire family what they need. As for the firewood, the firewood is much like mobs and players. With the kids helping the wife, it's quicker than just the wife doing it because they can cover more ground. In our case, it's quicker because the mobs / players die quicker. It saves the wife a lot of time, but Jim still has to grind out all day to make it possible, because without the food, the wife and kids would die. Without armor and weapons, the characters will die to anything they attack. That's the whole point i'm trying to make. Some aspects become easier, but the hard parts of the game, getting armor, weapons, gold, resources, becomes harder with the more people you have. The easier part, killing things, killing players, raiding caravans, becomes easier with the more people you have. Just like every situation, people can come up with ways to make the harder parts easier and the easier parts harder. That's where counters come into play, and you say they don't matter much, but they actually do. If a player could counter a multiboxer, then what makes collecting firewood easier with more people now actually becomes harder, making the multiboxer vulnerable and making the extra helping hands useless. That's my whole point. If we learn to counter a multiboxer, then they are no longer an issue that people need to worry about, and all they are doing is giving themselves a harder time and very, very slight advantages in terms of votes (which don't matter anyways since the high end guilds will ultimately decides who owns the metropolises.)
They have stated that multi- boxing will be allowed as long you're manually controlling each account. I believe this was mentioned in Wednesday's live stream.
Correct me if I'm wrong.... But from my understanding Intrepid has no issues with multi-boxing (cause more subs obviously) but didn't i hear them in one of their interviews that while MULTI boxing is ok, Automation of the concurrent accounts would not be? Like one key press controlling all accounts is not allowed.
[quote quote=22432]Correct me if I’m wrong…. But from my understanding Intrepid has no issues with multi-boxing (cause more subs obviously) but didn’t i hear them in one of their interviews that while MULTI boxing is ok, Automation of the concurrent accounts would not be? Like one key press controlling all accounts is not allowed.
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Almost right. What they said is correct, automation isn't allowed, multiboxing is. However, automation is different from your definition. Automation is where you press one button, and it does something like "cast fireball, wait 0.5 seconds, cast fireball, repeat until dead, autoTarget closest(alive), repeat" Where you press one button, and it kills things while you afk. That command basically says that it will cast fireball on the target closest to it that can be attacked, it'll wait 0.5 seconds, then cast fireball again, and once the target is dead, it will target the thing closest to it again and repeat the process. That's automation, and it can be done even with one character, it doesn't have to be a multibox to be automation. Regular Multiboxing on the other hand is, I press 1 button, let's say fireball, and they all cast fireball because their button is set to be the same as the first one. Then they sit and do nothing until I press the button again, then they will all cast it again. That's not automation, i'm manually pressing the button each time I want them to do something.
Almost right. What they said is correct, automation isn't allowed, multiboxing is. However, automation is different from your definition. Automation is where you press one button, and it does something like "cast fireball, wait 0.5 seconds, cast fireball, repeat until dead, autoTarget closest(alive), repeat" Where you press one button, and it kills things while you afk. That command basically says that it will cast fireball on the target closest to it that can be attacked, it'll wait 0.5 seconds, then cast fireball again, and once the target is dead, it will target the thing closest to it again and repeat the process. That's automation, and it can be done even with one character, it doesn't have to be a multibox to be automation. Regular Multiboxing on the other hand is, I press 1 button, let's say fireball, and they all cast fireball because their button is set to be the same as the first one. Then they sit and do nothing until I press the button again, then they will all cast it again. That's not automation, i'm manually pressing the button each time I want them to do something.
[quote quote=22451]<blockquote> <div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/how-multi-boxing-will-turn-aoc-into-p2w-theorycraft/page/3/#post-22448" rel="nofollow">Bringslite wrote:</a></div> Any way to get some paragraph action in here? I am interested enough to read but huge blocks of text are an interest killer.
</blockquote> What do you want to know that I might be able to sum up?
[/quote] Nothing specific because I usually just skip huge blocks as I have here, so I don't have a grasp on any of those posts.
The most valid concerns so far that I have seen involve things that count player votes like control of Node cities, IMO. There are or have been sandbox MMOs that limit you to one account. It is easier nowadays to bypass such restrictions but not so difficult that people won't do it to have one or twenty extra accounts if they want.
Hopefully Intrepid will come up with a solution on the voting thing. Again, IMO nothing much else here is something that can't be done easily with a guild. Trying to stop that is probably not worth the effort..,
Call me old fashioned but I don't see why everyone can't just install the client provided with no modifications or additions and play the game as intended.
With the exception of people possibly needing a certain type of interface etc because of a disability of course.
While I've done it before myself I don't even really like the idea of crafting alts in a player driven economy, I think the interdependency is important. You could argue a group of friends or a close knit structured guild is essentially similar to having multiple crafters of your own but they are still in part going to be working towards their own goals.
It may be pessimistic of me but people don't generally spend more money or go to more effort for something that isn't beneficial to them.
If, like a previous poster stated, Intrepid is not ok with the allowance of automated multi-boxing, then my concerns are alleviated. Personally, whether it's a "one button push" for each command, or "one button push" for an automated cycle, it's all the same to me. I've never heard of people sinking RL resources to do somthing, for no benefit (their's or someone else's benefit).
I hear all your counter arguments, Leptos. But, the bare facts are, whether big or small, synched multi-boxing (automated or not) confers an advantage.
Resource gathering, is an easy example of one. More gatherers, and larger carrying capacity. Granted, you will have to spend more time gearing all the toons, but once their geared...... And, the same thing applies to those who have alts, but don't multi-box. They have to log off one toon, log on another, play until they're satisfied, log off that toon, log on another, rinse repeat. For them, the process is much slower.
I have no problems with people owning multiple accounts, or even manually playing those toons (unsynched) at the same time. It's the synching/botting I don't wish to see....in any form.
I do think multi-boxing could end up as a problem. However, it is easily fixed but there are some downsides. I agree with TickledPink on this one. There are a lot of couples, siblings and the like on the same IP that could potentially both play Ashes of Creation and I don't blame them its gonna be a great game. I'm sure however there could be some sort of account number limit on IP addresses thus countering this problem. There may be a few households somewhere however with 4-5 players but in my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantage here. Although, I would hate to be that one guy who cants get an account because he shares an IP with many others. This is just a suggestion not sure how effective it could be.
It isn't difficult to disguise or route to confuse an IP address. So far it is pretty much more hassle to try and stop multiple accounts than it is worth.
Just keep auto-follow out of the picture. Intrepid should build the tools to be able to look at accounts and see if they are "multi-boxing" in a bad way. Get too hung up about multiple accounts and you will drive yourself crazy and disappoint Alt-aholic players of which 99%(completely made up number) aren't doing anything wrong. They are just throwing money at Intrepid for the priviledge to have extra characters and explore more of what the game offers...
Th big standout for me is that any multi boxer or even guild of multi boxers isn't going to be able to hold a node against an entire guild(s) of individuals. If a person or group of persons attempts to do this, get the guild or an alliance together and raise it to the ground. Once you beat them down and kick them out you take over.
Otherwise, this isn't a problem until it becomes a problem. I don't want to see Intrepid forced into some heavy handed approach that prevents me from playing in my game room with my wife and son and maybe even my daughter.
Lets take a look at where the priorities of our wonderful developers lie.
This is not a AAA title company looking to meet their % margins over the experience of what they sate their priority is THE COMMUNITY.
IF we can agree that the philosophy of the Developers is to deliver the TRUE MMO experience, one would assume that preventing Multiboxing would be a priority for them at whatever the cost.
Thus, loosing money per account Banned/Limited to control the over all FAIRNESS of the game wouldn't seem like an arrow to the knee. It is what is to be EXPECTED by Intrepid to deliver the player experience that they PROMISE.
How they choose to deal with this dilemma? I guess we can speculate but it's too early to tell.
Lets look at where the priorities of our Developers lie.
This is not a AAA company looking to meet their profit % margins over what they stress is their main priority, THE COMMUNITY.
IF we can acknowledge that the Philosophy of Intrepid is so, we can then assume that the act of Banning/Silencing MULTIBOXERS would not be a blow to the knee. It is what is to be EXPECTED of a group of Developers/ fellow gamers promising us the TRUE MMO experience. To make the FAIRNESS of our community and its players the priority.
How they will address this dilemma? We can speculate but at this point it might be too early to tell.
Actually i was planning to write another post Monday about muti-boxing killing immersion.( with screen shots from our fav muti-box game AA )
Meanwhile for what i have listed here none of those things required anything outside a simple auto follow command that is built into most games. The potential for damage to the game / player-base defiantly exists but does not require automation . It just requires one player to be able to pay more rl money then another player for an the listed advantages. So as i said before allowing multi-boxing is basically making your game pay to win.
@pink How it is detectable is easy, behavior algorithms much the same way bots/scripts are detected. I mean they are different but fairly common behaviors exist among multi-boters.
While i appreciate (and perhaps not agree) with your thoughts and options etc. I would find them easier to read if you would please not post them as a text wall.
The real only problem for me is getting my caravans raided easily by a guy with 10 accounts, and i will not talk about ganking because intrepid said their corruption system would prevent abuse. Btw even some multiboxers do it mainly for profit in-game, lets talk about those services of power levling and accounts selling to, what you guys think of that?
I'll just be resource farming on my multiple accounts funneling everything to one character. Who cares about gearing up all my alt accounts, I only care about making my main the richest, strongest beast around. Which multi-boxing will give me the advantage to do so >:3
Seriously, you all are funny. Of Course multi-boxing is p2w. It is a degenerate way of p2w but still is. You sit there fishing on one account while I do it on three and lets see who comes out on top when I am way ahead of you.
fyi... This is just satire. In all honesty I really don't want multi-boxing to exist, but if it is allowed just like in every other mmo the player multi-boxing will get ahead of others. You don't need to max gear alts or anything. Just do simple task, no automation and make more bank than any one person not multi-boxing. An you all talk about just get a guild and destroy the multi-boxer. The multi-boxer can have a guild and still funnel everything to their main being stronger (gear-wise) than any other player solo.
You simply can not compete with a multi-boxer, there are just to many ways for them to gain an advantage by doing so. Only way this isn't p2w is if one account can play on multiple characters at one time. An if that isn't allowed then that would just mean multi-boxing is even more-so p2w cause now you can't do something advantageous that another person can do with paying more.
Power leveling can be addressed by simply decreasing a persons XP gain by increments per level disparity of the highest level person in group. 10 levels above you?..your xp is cut in half....15 levels..xp gain is cut by 75%. 20 levels?..no XP to be gained. Ive seen this work in many other games. Perfect deterrent.
I don't really understand why you feel you need to insult people. Do you actually have a talking point or thought or opinion that is not just a pointless insult to share ?
I don’t really understand why you feel you need to insult people. Do you actually have a talking point or thought or opinion that is not just a pointless insult to share ?
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I'm not sure if it's worth it for him to put his point down, as people may not want to read his "text wall" that might have some information that disregards most worries people have. But hey, atleast what he said was "easier to read". :P
Comments
<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.
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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.
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As you said, Ayren, there is a difference between what I term as "multi-boxing", and just having multiple accounts, running individually. My idea of multi-boxing are multiple accounts, synched/linked by a program, to take coammands from the "main toon". I consider that a form of botting, and am personally against power gaming of any kind.
[quote quote=22370]<blockquote>
<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>
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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.
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Leptos, if the gains of multi-boxing (botting), are so slim, then once again, why do it? It seems that the investment wouldn't equal te return, according to your posts. However, whether the gains are big, or small, it'still an advantage granted by programming, as opposed to pure player skill. And, that's weak.
Also, all that advice about how to beat a "boxer" in PvP, are all the same things someone would do if it was just 1v1, and not 1vMultiple. Juking, LoS, etc etc. are things people do anyway, without having to worry that if they make a mistake, it's game over, after getting hit by multiple attacks at once.
If botting programs are not allowed in AoC, then terrific!
<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-22388" rel="nofollow">Xephita wrote:</a></div>
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.
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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.
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Whether the buttons are "synched" to be pressed manually, or "synched" to a program to fire automatically, it all falls under the "botting" umbrella in my book.
If someone wants to have multiple accounts, and run those multiple accounts from different computer, individually, then by all means, have a blast. But, once you start synching those multiple accounts to follow simplified commands, at the same time, that's a foul in my book. Just because it may be allowed in other games, doesn't mean it's good. Just means no one cares.
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.
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I completely agree, I don't want to see this happening in this game either. I'm just here to let people know that while yes, multiboxing is giving an unfair advantage to people who pay to have multiple accounts in some situations, those people are also being given an unfair disadvantage that they are willing to take. Let's think of it in a different way, since i've tried to explain logically before. Let's make up a scenario.
Let's say that there's a man, let's call him Jim since we've already used Joe. Jim is alone on a beach, and he's not getting help from anyone. He has a house, basic tools, and a fishing rod. Everyday Jim sits on the beach fishing to supply himself with enough food to last him for that day. After he fishes up his few fish, he goes and collects firewood, just enough to last him for the chilly nights. Well, Jim has his routine going quite nicely, and nothing ever changes. He's content. Well, let's say we are overlords in this situation and we give Jim a wife. While he may be happy that he's no longer alone and that he can get some help, there's really not much she can do except help him with his routine. So, Jim and his wife go fishing together. Since the fish is a variable that Jim can't control, the rate at which Jim and his wife catches fish is the same as if Jim was fishing alone, so it takes Jim longer to catch enough fish for him and his wife to both eat off of for the day. In the meantime, after realizing it's not going any faster, Jim tells his wife to go look for firewood so that they can get a headstart. She does this, and they meet back at the house when they are finished. While it cut Jim's time in half to go get firewood, it doubled his time to get fish for his wife and himself. So, things go as normal, Jim catching fish while his wife gets firewood, their new routine not taking any longer, and on some days it taking less time because it's two of them. Well, let's say that Jim and his wife decide to have kids. Well, they get twins. This is a blessing because now there's four of them, and when the kids get old enough they can help out and make things easier on their father, Jim. Well, it's the same situation as before with his wife, where the kids come in to help with fishing, but the fish don't want to bite at a different rate, so they really aren't doing any good. So Jim says to the kids "Go help your mother collect firewood." The kids oblige and go to help Jim's wife while Jim sits on the beach and fishes. Now he has to provide enough fish for his wife and two children, as well as himself. It takes him hours to do this. Meanwhile, because firewood is a variable that's everywhere rather than just in one place like the fish, the children and their mother finish collecting firewood very quickly and wait for Jim back at the house. Jim, on the other hand, has had his time fishing quadrupled from when he was alone, and he now must work harder to provide for his family. However, he does it happily, knowing that his hard work is going to pay off, and someday his kids will be big and strong like their father.
The whole idea of this story was to explain what it's like going from playing one character to playing multiple. You have to provide for each character like they are family, and if we compare the fish to the valuable loot, like armor, weapons, etc. then the drop rate for them doesn't change. Jim can't make them drop faster, he just has to live with it and keep grinding out until he can get his entire family what they need. As for the firewood, the firewood is much like mobs and players. With the kids helping the wife, it's quicker than just the wife doing it because they can cover more ground. In our case, it's quicker because the mobs / players die quicker. It saves the wife a lot of time, but Jim still has to grind out all day to make it possible, because without the food, the wife and kids would die. Without armor and weapons, the characters will die to anything they attack. That's the whole point i'm trying to make. Some aspects become easier, but the hard parts of the game, getting armor, weapons, gold, resources, becomes harder with the more people you have. The easier part, killing things, killing players, raiding caravans, becomes easier with the more people you have. Just like every situation, people can come up with ways to make the harder parts easier and the easier parts harder. That's where counters come into play, and you say they don't matter much, but they actually do. If a player could counter a multiboxer, then what makes collecting firewood easier with more people now actually becomes harder, making the multiboxer vulnerable and making the extra helping hands useless. That's my whole point. If we learn to counter a multiboxer, then they are no longer an issue that people need to worry about, and all they are doing is giving themselves a harder time and very, very slight advantages in terms of votes (which don't matter anyways since the high end guilds will ultimately decides who owns the metropolises.)
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Almost right. What they said is correct, automation isn't allowed, multiboxing is. However, automation is different from your definition. Automation is where you press one button, and it does something like "cast fireball, wait 0.5 seconds, cast fireball, repeat until dead, autoTarget closest(alive), repeat" Where you press one button, and it kills things while you afk. That command basically says that it will cast fireball on the target closest to it that can be attacked, it'll wait 0.5 seconds, then cast fireball again, and once the target is dead, it will target the thing closest to it again and repeat the process. That's automation, and it can be done even with one character, it doesn't have to be a multibox to be automation. Regular Multiboxing on the other hand is, I press 1 button, let's say fireball, and they all cast fireball because their button is set to be the same as the first one. Then they sit and do nothing until I press the button again, then they will all cast it again. That's not automation, i'm manually pressing the button each time I want them to do something.
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What do you want to know that I might be able to sum up?
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/how-multi-boxing-will-turn-aoc-into-p2w-theorycraft/page/3/#post-22448" rel="nofollow">Bringslite wrote:</a></div>
Any way to get some paragraph action in here? I am interested enough to read but huge blocks of text are an interest killer.
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What do you want to know that I might be able to sum up?
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Nothing specific because I usually just skip huge blocks as I have here, so I don't have a grasp on any of those posts.
The most valid concerns so far that I have seen involve things that count player votes like control of Node cities, IMO. There are or have been sandbox MMOs that limit you to one account. It is easier nowadays to bypass such restrictions but not so difficult that people won't do it to have one or twenty extra accounts if they want.
Hopefully Intrepid will come up with a solution on the voting thing. Again, IMO nothing much else here is something that can't be done easily with a guild. Trying to stop that is probably not worth the effort..,
With the exception of people possibly needing a certain type of interface etc because of a disability of course.
While I've done it before myself I don't even really like the idea of crafting alts in a player driven economy, I think the interdependency is important. You could argue a group of friends or a close knit structured guild is essentially similar to having multiple crafters of your own but they are still in part going to be working towards their own goals.
It may be pessimistic of me but people don't generally spend more money or go to more effort for something that isn't beneficial to them.
I hear all your counter arguments, Leptos. But, the bare facts are, whether big or small, synched multi-boxing (automated or not) confers an advantage.
Resource gathering, is an easy example of one. More gatherers, and larger carrying capacity. Granted, you will have to spend more time gearing all the toons, but once their geared...... And, the same thing applies to those who have alts, but don't multi-box. They have to log off one toon, log on another, play until they're satisfied, log off that toon, log on another, rinse repeat. For them, the process is much slower.
I have no problems with people owning multiple accounts, or even manually playing those toons (unsynched) at the same time. It's the synching/botting I don't wish to see....in any form.
I agree with TickledPink on this one. There are a lot of couples, siblings and the like on the same IP that could potentially both play Ashes of Creation and I don't blame them its gonna be a great game.
I'm sure however there could be some sort of account number limit on IP addresses thus countering this problem. There may be a few households somewhere however with 4-5 players but in my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantage here. Although, I would hate to be that one guy who cants get an account because he shares an IP with many others. This is just a suggestion not sure how effective it could be.
Even if this is a valid comment, it's true for every single game out there.
Just keep auto-follow out of the picture. Intrepid should build the tools to be able to look at accounts and see if they are "multi-boxing" in a bad way. Get too hung up about multiple accounts and you will drive yourself crazy and disappoint Alt-aholic players of which 99%(completely made up number) aren't doing anything wrong. They are just throwing money at Intrepid for the priviledge to have extra characters and explore more of what the game offers...
Otherwise, this isn't a problem until it becomes a problem. I don't want to see Intrepid forced into some heavy handed approach that prevents me from playing in my game room with my wife and son and maybe even my daughter.
Scripting = Ban
Regular account use = ok
You cant stop multiboxers if they are playing normally without using scripts.
<strong>Community>Profit</strong>
Lets take a look at where the priorities of our wonderful developers lie.
This is not a AAA title company looking to meet their % margins over the experience of what they sate their priority is THE COMMUNITY.
IF we can agree that the philosophy of the Developers is to deliver the TRUE MMO experience, one would assume that preventing Multiboxing would be a priority for them at whatever the cost.
Thus, loosing money per account Banned/Limited to control the over all FAIRNESS of the game wouldn't seem like an arrow to the knee. It is what is to be EXPECTED by Intrepid to deliver the player experience that they PROMISE.
How they choose to deal with this dilemma? I guess we can speculate but it's too early to tell.
Community> Profit.
Lets look at where the priorities of our Developers lie.
This is not a AAA company looking to meet their profit % margins over what they stress is their main priority, THE COMMUNITY.
IF we can acknowledge that the Philosophy of Intrepid is so, we can then assume that the act of Banning/Silencing MULTIBOXERS would not be a blow to the knee. It is what is to be EXPECTED of a group of Developers/ fellow gamers promising us the TRUE MMO experience. To make the FAIRNESS of our community and its players the priority.
How they will address this dilemma? We can speculate but at this point it might be too early to tell.
Meanwhile for what i have listed here none of those things required anything outside a simple auto follow command that is built into most games. The potential for damage to the game / player-base defiantly exists but does not require automation . It just requires one player to be able to pay more rl money then another player for an the listed advantages. So as i said before allowing multi-boxing is basically making your game pay to win.
@pink
How it is detectable is easy, behavior algorithms much the same way bots/scripts are detected. I mean they are different but fairly common behaviors exist among multi-boters.
While i appreciate (and perhaps not agree) with your thoughts and options etc. I would find them easier to read if you would please not post them as a text wall.
It's against the spirit of MMOs, it's immersion breaking, it requires automation.
Sorry it's cheating and pay to win, nothing more needs to be said.
Btw even some multiboxers do it mainly for profit in-game, lets talk about those services of power levling and accounts selling to, what you guys think of that?
i had mentioned power leveling , but thank you for expanding on that.
@Valentines
I completely agree
Seriously, you all are funny. Of Course multi-boxing is p2w. It is a degenerate way of p2w but still is. You sit there fishing on one account while I do it on three and lets see who comes out on top when I am way ahead of you.
fyi... This is just satire. In all honesty I really don't want multi-boxing to exist, but if it is allowed just like in every other mmo the player multi-boxing will get ahead of others. You don't need to max gear alts or anything. Just do simple task, no automation and make more bank than any one person not multi-boxing. An you all talk about just get a guild and destroy the multi-boxer. The multi-boxer can have a guild and still funnel everything to their main being stronger (gear-wise) than any other player solo.
You simply can not compete with a multi-boxer, there are just to many ways for them to gain an advantage by doing so. Only way this isn't p2w is if one account can play on multiple characters at one time. An if that isn't allowed then that would just mean multi-boxing is even more-so p2w cause now you can't do something advantageous that another person can do with paying more.
I don't really understand why you feel you need to insult people. Do you actually have a talking point or thought or opinion that is not just a pointless insult to share ?
I don’t really understand why you feel you need to insult people. Do you actually have a talking point or thought or opinion that is not just a pointless insult to share ?
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I'm not sure if it's worth it for him to put his point down, as people may not want to read his "text wall" that might have some information that disregards most worries people have. But hey, atleast what he said was "easier to read". :P