Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Yea. I am. You are paying for an advantage over someone who can only afford 1. You dont need to control them at the same time to abuse it. Its laid out exactly how in this thread. Try focusing on that if you want to make a counter argument. Everyone is on equal footing with 1 account as you cant even play unless you have one. Yes pay to win is literslly you paying for more accounts to gain advantages. Are you saying you are not gaining am advantage by paying more money to do more stuff? You are advocating for paying for an advantage. Literally p2w. When ever you drop more money then the initial purschase required you are paying to do more. I was told you can have multiple characters on one account. So having multiple accounts for that seems redundant. To me the biggest problem is crafting/gathering and auction abuse because of multiple locations at once. A benefit one person doesnt get unless they spend more money.
Okay here is the solution, dont allow it. Its destructive to immersion and the game economy. Ask WoW.
You're paying for a subscription that offers you certain things in-game. Mining nodes, quests you can do once a day etc. If you're paying for another subscription that offers you exactly the same thing, what's the issue? Nobody is stopping you from owning more subscriptions, yet you want to impose a rule that prevents others to do so?
Mind you, those people will spend more time in the game than you.
It's like you're telling me to shutdown my HBO subscription because I already have Netflix, and the show that interests me is in both at the same time. But here is the catch. There are other shows that aren't on Netflix and are on HBO.
I cannot make a simpler analogy.
To further expand on this:
I'm paying 2 subscriptions in final fantasy 14, and I use them to transfer gold from 1 character to another, because in-game you cannot transfer funds between your characters. Even though I worked hard to earn that gold. I make it on 1 character, spend it on another.
Edit: I'll also say that the steps that the devs will implement against those who abuse the system are the exact things that prevent me from legitimately playing the game, and that's why I need to multibox. What's the reason they stopped trading gold in ff14 between characters on the same account? To fight botters and RTM. And me who's doing neither is handicapped by this. And you want to take away from me the only way that I have to do that. To have 1 dedicated character on 1 thing, and another on farming gold.
Problem is, subscribing to HBO and Netflix doesnt negatively effect the games economy and force people who cant afford to multi box, to play 5 times as long and hard, just keep up with a single server multiboxer who is crashing prices and over inflating the market cause he can play 5 toons, at once. Its not fair, it's not right, it kills immersion and negatively impacts the economy.
You can't play 5 toons at once unless you use scripts and are actively botting. At least I assume you can't since you need to swap between clients and leave another toon unattended while you control the other. Let them pursue those who actively abuse the system, banning it outright along with the other preventions they'll implement against rtm and botters, and whatnot, will handicap people.
Also, for those who abuse this, there is always the solution of hardware ID ban. Buying another subscription is easy, swapping an unknown part of your pc for a new one is not.
The economy is fickle in every mmorpg. IF you think you can prevent it from having inflated prices you're wrong. Unless said prices for items are fixed.
There's also the issue of funding the game. You have to let go of 1 thing to get another. You cant have it all perfect. It's naive to think otherwise.
Not true. There are hardware hubs, no scripts needed, that can control up to 15 PCs on one keyboard and mouse.
and they pay 15 subscriptions, and keep the game well funded. Seriously. You think the company grows the money on trees? big chunk of income is from multiple subs. People need to learn to stop bitching about it.
I think the game/company will be fine financially if they ban multiboxers. They arent any kind of large population, but they do incredible damage for such a small representation.
As someone who enjoys making multiple alts to experience a wide breadth of play styles, I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment. But I do agree that multiboxing combined with the family and freehold systems can lead to a problematic pay-to-win meta where the more competitive players feel the need to buy multiple accounts to keep up.
That’s not a valid defense when a game is trying to avoid P2W, that it’s okay for them to benefit as long as AoC makes money. That’s completely missing the point. It’s not okay, and people should always bitch if something is pay to win in a game they promised to not be.
That being said, as I said before if Intrepid can’t control what players do outside of the game itself then you can’t really blame them. I’m not at all convinced that multi-boxing is P2W unless AoC officially supports it the way a game like WoW does, and they show no sign of doing that. I’m only giving a reminder that the idea of being able to pay money to gain a tactical advantage within AoC itself (and with support by Intrepid) would be a big deal and would justifiably piss off a lot of people (myself included).
They promised the game not to be pay2win. They can't promise on behalf of other people not exploiting the game. And blocking multiboxing is impossible. They can go after those who exploit it by using bots and scripts, and whatnot to profit, but do you seriously think they're going to start banning people who use it as a workaround for the steps they'll implement against botters and RTM? Hell no. Even if those players use their alts to mine double the nodes. As long as they're not scripting the actions they won't do shit to them.
I've seen the same thing in several other mmorpg's. I've never been banned for multiboxing.
And if they make trading stuff between characters on the same account possible, I wont even need to multibox.
So the whole topic is bunch of what ifs.
They already stated they will be banning if you use 3rd party software to multibox. I havent got word if they are capable of detecting VMs to multibox and if its possible to stop that. If they can then yes, they can stop multiboxing on a single computer. Outside one computer there isnt shit they can do. If they can do something, then yes I do expect them to do something.
Glad it got cleared up for you.
The ruling most MMO companies have, when pressed, is one action for one keypress. If you do anything at all that means you get more than one action for one keypress, they are withing their rights to take action.
Not sure if that is going to be Intrepids stance, and in all honesty, with the PvP and action combat aspects of this game, I doubt this is an issue that would ever come up outside of theoretical discussion, but it is easy to both detect and rule against.
Nothing wrong with it at all. The problem is when you start botting a multi-box. Know the difference and rest your neck, you're frothing from it.
If you are so against it, I am sure that you have been able to figure out how to find every one of those people and have advised Intrepid on how to stop it.
Why don't you tell us the amazing solution that you have found that nobody else has.
the solution is to not allow multiboxing.
That isn't the solution.
That could be the proposal for a solution, but if it were, the solution would then have to be in fiding a way to stop it - which can't actually be done.
That is why there are all these threads.
Or everyone posting isnt a game developer and is simply expressing things they like and dislike. Aka feedback. Do you post a coded solution everytime you post a bug? Saying things like dont post a thread if you dont have a solution is unhepful for the devs and is contradictory to the purpose of Steven asking people to come to the forums and post about their experiences on what they like and dislike.
But I do participate in (and some would argue, drive) discussion and debate on a number of topics.
In the above post you quoted, I didn't tell the poster to not post, I simply bought them up to speed with where the multi-thread discussion currently is so that they can quickly join in the discussion should they opt to, and if they opt not to, so they have a general understanding that things are somewhat harder than the poster may have previously thought.
You've only been here for a few days - but generally speaking, any post I make is in an attempt to continue discussion, not stifle it.
This thing that you have a problem with can be accomplished with a single account by making an alternate character and parking it anywhere. If I can do something with one account why would it upset you for me to pay twice as much to the game company to do the same thing?
Botting is bad. Okay.
Having multiple accounts for one character by itself isn't wrong. If I bought 5 accounts and still only had one character it hurts nothing but my wallet and I don't "win".
If my wife and I play together, we could help each other with gathering and crafting. If I bought enough accounts to fill up a guild and played them all so I could be an Island, I still don't see how that would be "winning" in a way that a single account couldn't do the same thing with alts. It would just mean that I don't have to play with you.
You might have a point with the housing that is one per account for processing materials being unfair. That being said, if 3 people did the same thing with each of their accounts to craft things for just those 3 players, that doesn't seem to me that its unfair.
If a player isnt scrpting and isnt botting and pays for 3 computers and 3 accounts and wants to play the game their way, why does that bother you?
If your answer is being in more than one place at a time, again, alts.
if your answer is using a virtual machine to have multiple clients open at the same time, but not scripting or botting, therefore only controlling one character at a time, alts.
If i can do it with one account and you want to do the same with 5, then all you're doing is supporting the game.
I heard you say that on FFXIV you farm nodes with a single character and you have quick travel to go to the next one as soon at it spawns but AoC does not have quick travel. Players with multiple accounts can park a character at a node site and mine it before you can get there. A single account with alts can do the same thing. Not sure there is a reason to stop it.
Maybe im wrong, but aside from scripting and botting, I don't feel like playing multiple accounts is pay to win.
** Edit**
OP also said
Alts can do this, thus, NOT p2w.
I have a mage and I was running second screen / 2nd computer with buffer. Buffer pretty much doubled your damage and gave you "infinite" mana. Now I was able to farm twice as fast playing solo. How is that not P2W? In lineage 2 we sometimes had 4 people running 9 man parties with people just boxing buffer characters. Surely this game is a lot more complex but still wouldn't your own following bard buffing you around give a nice boost to solo leveling?
How good will his buffs be? If it's even 0.3x boost to damage/vampiric effects then that class is already boosting a whole lot. Not to mention you have party EXP boost which is (1.4-1.5x? multiplier). On top of that you don't have to share your loot with another person and you kill more in same time which gives you better chance for better loot. Even if the leveling is a tad slower than paying solo you still level 2 characters at once.
OR depending when bards get their key buffs you can just keep him on follow but outside the party.
I did quadro boxing in L2 with no macros what so ever when I was younger with no problem.
Multiboxing killed l2 for me in the end. Private servers now a days with 3000 people are actually 600 people with 2400 multiboxes. Steven how do you not see boxes as P2W after playing Lineage 2?