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
Truth be told, there are actual companies with the knowledge, resources and infrastructure to infest just about any game with farming techniques. VPN architecture, virtual desktops, IP Spoofing, these are all tactics employed by such "farmers".
I personally do enjoy running multiple accounts and find it very useful. Usually it's just an alt account that is for example a completely different class that's in high-demand. Or an account to sit around the guild hall and handle administration tasks, building, farming, etc. I don't know how the game will lend to alt usage, but it's typically one of my priorities to figure out how to leverage an alt account to get the most benefit out of it. Ultimately is it worth it? That all depends on the individual and his/her use-case.
My main question is:
Will I be significantly at a disadvantage playing this way versus a multi-boxer?
Could you provide any examples of how long-term differences would exist between a player like me versus a player that multi-boxes say 2 computers (without macros or programs) using only in-game mechanics (follow, keystrokes, etc.)?
Just read old posts, a lot of people have given good examples on how multiboxing gives a P2W advantage.
A subscription fee, a phone number requirement and the necessary program restrictions should dissuade most if not all meaningful multiboxing, while allowing every type of household to attend.
So you want to force me to buy an extra cell phone if I want to play with the kids? They don't have their own phones.
As mentioned by others before, this is easily fixed by Intrepid setting up a system where parent accounts/phones can host. With some clever set ups this could work without allowing people to abuse the system for multiboxing.
There's services (Android application, free) that will give you a temporary phone number you can use for SMS.
You could buy a prepaid phone and activate it.
And if there's a notion of "parent accounts/phone", what stops someone from claiming the accounts are being used by his kids ? Intrepid cannot possibly investigate to find out if a player really has kids or not.
The only way you can tell if someone is multi boxing is by profiling their behaviors in game as well as their inputs. ( data collection and analysis, based on training data obtained from actual single and multi boxers )
This can still be faked, but if you use artificial intelligence, you can keep training it with the latest cheat tools. Good luck to multi boxers and cheaters trying to reproduce behavior and inputs that are indistinguishable from real humans playing the game 1 client at a time.
I would be curious how many players plan to multibox against how many don't. That number would give an idea of how much potential money would be gained by allowing it. I wouldn't think even a full percent would do it myself, but a poll could give an idea of it.
I have an account and refer all my friends. 7 of them try the game and love it. Since all 7 now have subs, I am paying $0. If I now create another account and pay for it, I now have 2 accounts but am only paying 1 subscription amount.
This right here negates all of the arguements about 1 person paying more than $15 (or whatever it ends up being).
I specifically only really care if people can play with themselves and not require other players otherwise they glorified mules you are paying extra money for. Still it is pay to win and it was stated there will be none of that.
U.S. East
This files under the realm of automatic gameplay. Since the multi boxers would only realistically be playing one character with several others be automatic. This is of course a personal opinion but anything like this, or even add ons that are for "convenience" may not be game breaking in low usage, but for example 8 add ons, or extra character in use later can degrade the intended core game play designs.
However, this is still a business and a muti boxers, especially ones that like their toons to look the same with cosmetic gear, can be huge factors and not to be over looked easily. So I understand.
Love. Bittner.
EDIT: After reading more, I have a much better understanding of the teams stance on this and 10000% agree. We will be having many people playing this in my house and for sure do not want there to be hurdles to jump be able to that.
As well as that, if events and such also have easy accessible rewards, or rewards which are limited to obtain, for example, and event comes along and everyone gets a free "something good" by just inputting a few minutes, then this can be a huge benefit for multi boxers.
So in essence I have nothing against multibxing as long as the ingame rewards take effort to obtain and are not limited per account!
Stop trying to make it so some people won't be allowed to play the game only because it doesn't affect you. Just make sure that the ratio of pc to game client will be 1:1.
The real subject for discussion should be, how well prepared intrepid will be against the usage of bots, scripts, multiboxing using VM and software of that sort .
BTW Intrepid if you decide not to remove the family summoning skill, at least increase the cooldown of it to 10-12hours or something, otherwise it can be (and will be) abused with so many ways especially by well organized guilds/parties
It's a huge point that pisses people off because people in WoW Multi box entire dungeon groups by themselves. A lot of stuff in the game is locked behind dungeons so being able to do that by yourself is an advantage that is too great.
U.S. East
U.S. East
No it doesn't, that point doesn't even make it to the debate floor. Just because it isn't $15 doesn't mean its value is gone. The friend referral has the same value of $15 in this instance and a large player base won't even have 1 friend referral attached on their account.
I mean in pvp, sure... but pve, the group being in a dungeon room where no one moves, and all you do is pull and kill the mob, single target heal with the buff class in the back doing nothing, I mean that's feasible...
Multiboxing has always been (and will always be) when someone is running around with multiple characters controlling them all simultaneously with linked inputs. Examples of this is people running around with 5 shamans in WoW, they all cast Chain Lightning at the same time and one shot someone.
Botting/scripting is when the player does not have to actively input any commands and the game plays itself, you can see examples of this in usually mid-level hunters that mindless grind the same routes to level up, or bots which players run to queue for and play Alterac Valley battlegrounds overnight while they are sleeping. There is even parties of bots which endlessly farm dungeons
Owning and playing 2 accounts, is just that. Here it is in Steven's own words - https://clips.twitch.tv/AssiduousGracefulCocoaBrainSlug - This is clearly the right mindset, but I'm not sure how limiting a PC to 1 client (posted in News in the discord) goes along with this? Multiboxing is bad and should not be (and isn't) allowed. Botting/scripting is bad and should not be (and isn't) allowed. Owning and playing 2 accounts is neither of those, and is allowed. Why should we need a second gaming rig for that though?
Not true. Before Wow there was L2, and in that game we multi-boxing meant having multiple clients open yes, but not using linked inputs as you say. that's part of scripting as it would require an external tool (other than the clients) to send inputs to the specific windows/clients.
Also I feel like the type of people to multibox are the type that will do whatever it takes to get that advantage. They have already taken that extra step past normal gameplay, that downloading a simple keystroke duplicator or similar wouldn't be too far off for them. Macros and duplicators are such a simple and abundant program that I think it would be very hard for anticheat and security teams to detect them consistently.
I disagree that folks who multi box are 1 step away from downloading macro/scripts etc to automate key strokes.
For example, I play with my oldest son (and by the time the game comes out possibly two of my sons) and yet I want to keep us together in levels, but we won't be playing together all the time. like I work 9-5, he's just got school to worry about lol, also when he goes to bed, I play for another 4-6 hours, so unless we gain the same amount of exp when not playing together, one will get ahead. Now, not saying it would be easy, but being able to sit him down in a corner (and hi I when he's playing without me) while I grind out a dungeon room with some guildies, setting his char on auto follow while we travel, I think is fine. Keep in mind the pvp aspect of the game. dragging around an extra account means that if I can't defeat the enemy solo (am sorry but one can't multi-box pvp lol), then both chars are dead.
Now when multiboxing is paired with anti-EULA programs like bots that can play a character nearly as well as the average skilled player, is when things get out of hand. It's likely easier for Ashes to prohibit and control multiboxing than it is for them to always seek out the ever-dodging hackers that will cheat at any cost.
Which is why it's probably (and unfortunately, dare I say) best to severely limit multiboxing to begin with... Unfortunately, becauseI happen to be a fan of running multiple toons and making my own groups like I used to do in Everquest, but then people with MQ2 (cheat bot program) took it to the next, unhealthy, level.. and could dominate group and raid content on their own without the help of others. I'm sure that's never been in the vision of any MMO developers nor myself.
U.S. East
U.S. East