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Multiboxing input and why its p2w
DontTouchMyHoHos
Member
So I watched the AMA and heard multiboxing is acceptabl. Now I dont know much about the game itself, but not allowing macros etc. i dont know how that will be implemented. What i'm aware of is that it is supposed to not be P2W and here is where i believe multiboxing is pretty much pay to win. You get a crafter set up and have 10 different crafters, now you send all those 10 differenct crafters to different locations and since nodes are time based you can set up a rotating system to gather those nodes and move the characters on each box to different locations, if there is auto run that makes things easier. This p2w, people are paying for multiple accounts to gather at multiple locations to gather and mine resources. PvP exists, but now people have to punish themselves to stop a multiboxer. You are paying for multiple accounts to gather or do things at different locations. Simply alt tabing through the different boxes takes little to no effort. Now you are multi boxing different auctions at the same time working the economy left and right. How did this person get these advantages? They paid for them. Its P2W. You dont need a macro to do these specific things and im pretty sure there will be numerous ways to manually abuse the system by paying to have multiple characters.
This to me is the biggest contradiction to P2W I can see so far. FF14 essentially removed the need to multibox because you could be everything, but when you allow a small amount this is how you create a p2w environment. People with money have no need to care about restrictions. There are 4 categories of a player. People with time, people with money, people with skill and people with both time, money, and skill. However you want to wage the whom can beat whom in these categories, there is one that will always win no matter what. Time skill and money. Those people you can never over come with either time or skill alone as money is the single determining factor.
This all encompasses crafting as well. What can crafting benefit? All aspects of the game. What can abusing the economy by conducting auctions in multiple locations through trading resources etc.? People that can multibox multiple accounts. The person with time, money, and skill now is capable over being better then any player without money.
TLDR; Multiboxing is p2w 2 EX. crafting/gathering multiple locations at once and abusing auctions/economy through numerous accounts at once that require 0 macros.
Edit: Please excuse my ignorance if I dont understand something, but this is simply my take and why multiboxing can be bad.
This to me is the biggest contradiction to P2W I can see so far. FF14 essentially removed the need to multibox because you could be everything, but when you allow a small amount this is how you create a p2w environment. People with money have no need to care about restrictions. There are 4 categories of a player. People with time, people with money, people with skill and people with both time, money, and skill. However you want to wage the whom can beat whom in these categories, there is one that will always win no matter what. Time skill and money. Those people you can never over come with either time or skill alone as money is the single determining factor.
This all encompasses crafting as well. What can crafting benefit? All aspects of the game. What can abusing the economy by conducting auctions in multiple locations through trading resources etc.? People that can multibox multiple accounts. The person with time, money, and skill now is capable over being better then any player without money.
TLDR; Multiboxing is p2w 2 EX. crafting/gathering multiple locations at once and abusing auctions/economy through numerous accounts at once that require 0 macros.
Edit: Please excuse my ignorance if I dont understand something, but this is simply my take and why multiboxing can be bad.
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Comments
There are people working on this game far better at creating solutions, but stephen explicitly said he had no problem with multiboxing and stated this game isnt p2w.
Now, the people who use scripts are botting, which should be banned. But IP blocking is not going to work.
But a lot of people say that multiboxing is P2W, and I can verify that it is not really worth the effort.
There will be no lifers that do think it is worth it. I.E logging off characters specifically at rare nodes and only logging them on to gather the nodes. People will learn rare node rotations unless they have like 1000s of different rotating locations for the nodes. You dont need to put a whole lot of effort into moving a character to a location to simply gather and log them off till the node spawns or just leave them there till it spawns.
Virtue is the only good.
Steven literally acknowledged that multiboxing is a problem. You coming on here saying it as well is NOT helpful feedback, especially when there are already
1. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/44902/some-feedback-from-todays-ama#latest
2. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/44890/multiboxing-is-p2w#latest
3. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/44407/bots-and-multibox#latest
threads on the subject already on the first page of these forums.
Multiboxing is running 2 computers at the same time without running scripts. Logging off and on is just using multiple accounts. Not boxing. That is the same as logging in all your alts. No problem.
Edit:
Can nobody actually use the search function? There are multiple threads of the same things popping up by the hour.
Steven literally asked them in the call to action to come and make these threads. You’re gonna have to just calm down and get used to the new norm.
Virtue is the only good.
I can run multiple accounts of ff14 on one computer in a virtual environment. You dont need multiple computers to multibox.
I did not know this. That does change things and puts me a little at ease, is there a character limit? If so multiboxing still can be used and abused by having 30 characters etc. spread across the world. Having multiple characters on account kinda makes it even easier to multibox on a larger scale.
You still dont need to do it on a virtual either. You can multibox with one computer.
I dont know about the hostility, but if people can do it, they will find a way to abuse it. Gathering/Crafting and Auctions abuse though in this case are the biggest offenders and will outright have the potential to destroy the economy.
Based off this, is Steven's interpretation of multiboxing running one client on multiple computers? When I think of multiboxing (and I think a lot of other people) is one computer running multiple clients. If it's Steven's interpretation, and not the latter, I'm ok with it - I intend to play with the gf, so it's almost mandatory. However, if it does in fact include the latter, I am against it.
Its just that simple.
I didn't say it did.
I will be running 2 accounts. I do it old school. Two keyboards, two mice, two PCs.
-Multi-boxing as = Someone is physically at the desktop manually inputting commands (maybe assisted with macros/scripts, though that is a slippery slope).
-Botting = 100% unattended play requiring zero input.
The time investment to go after Multi-boxing would be a massive cost to intrepid for very little return. The amount of effort to try and identify someone at the machine interacting with both/all clients is near impossible. GM shows up, starts asking questions, and the HUMAN sitting there replies and responds, very easy to pretend to be two people, can even spoof different IPs for each client.
Botting on the other hand can be detected easier by first automation monitoring (pretty slick open source pattern recognition stuff is out there that could be monitoring client behaviors). Then when/if a GM shows up to challenge botters they can easily detect if it's a Bot. I think 99% of us who've played MMOs with Bots all can easily identify them without much issue.
Now Multi-boxing won't break the game, but Botting 100% will. I've quite several MMOs simply due to Bots running the server, along with many others.
Botting / Gold Sellers / (companies/groups using 3rd party tools to play the game for money) will kill the game very quickly if people see 100's of bots running around killing everything and harvesting all the resources. I would rather 110% of effort be put into dealing with this type of stuff than wasting any time having a GM talk to a guy running two accounts with some fancy scripts trying to figure out if he is breaking terms of services while 100's of bots are ruining zones.
My problem with multiboxing is one person running a team of characters that is essentially controlled via one input source (one keyboard). I've seen farmers in DAoC take out dragons by themselves through multiboxing. I've seen AoE multibox groups for dungeon farming/pvp. In WoW I've seen multiboxers running 5 or 6 shamans or mages or whatever, even in battlegrounds. That's the kind of thing that really bugs me.
If someone wants to run an extra account for whatever reason, whatever. It's more money for the game, makes the server feel a little more full, and very likely will not have a significant impact on anything (since most people won't bother with it in the first place). But even a single player who is controlling 5 active accounts at the same time can be extremely disruptive to all players in an area and provides a tremendously unfair advantage in PvP. Imagine PKer controlling 5 naked mages running around killing people... Also, I would consider controlling multiple characters with one keystroke "botting", which should be an immediate ban imho.
You can save yourself a headache with a KVM switch for the keyboard and mouse. Connect Keyboard and mouse to the KVM, connect KVM to both pcs, and then all you need to do is toggle the KVM to determine which computer receives the inputs.
Really makes managing your desk space a lot easier x.x
its definitely a sore spot for most people. While it wont be possible to satisfy everyone on this topic I think a compromise we can all accept is quite possible. The only question I have from a design perspective really is it even possible to develop useful administrator tools to combat those who take it to far with botting?
Seriously, just go for it, at this point it seems being ahead of everyone else be the only thing that brings you joy in your life, which is kinda sad...
I am pretty sure that Multiboxing will stay a Problem forever since there isnt anything you can really do against it, but I hav eyet to see it become a big problem...
I mean, lets be honest, how is Multiboxing worse than lets say be a successfull Streamer and have your sheeps flodd you with ressources? And since the Streamers Sheeps are literally just in the game to support their Senpai/Waifu, isnt it basically the same as someone p0laying on multiple accounts at the same time with the goal to make his main account stronger?
Please make sure that the question differentiates between multiboxing and botting.