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
I think with the referral system this is kind of in place?
Sadly, there's no way for Intrepid to know really if you are 1 person on two computers or 2 different people. The thing is, humanly speaking afaik without any 3rd party programs, you could run 2 computers at the same time maybe, but not more? Either way, unless you find Steven spying on you through the window, they can't know. And if they can somehow, I am sure they are going to geti nto trouble with security and privacy. Understandable.
What if you ban multiboxing, but allow for package suscription with a discount per person living in the household? For example, let's say you want to play with your wife or wife and one of your children, you'd have a 28/month price tag for a sub and allow that account to be able to run twice on the same IP address (same house); 26 a month for 3 people, etc. Spotify has a system like this for those family plans or whatever and apparently it's ok, legally wise.
You'd say "What if i wanna play outside of my house? Will I need a new subbed account?". No. But outside of the house's IP, you can log in only once at a time. In general this gives big flexibility of choice to players while at the same time not leaving Intrepid's goals behind.
I'm also thinking as a South American that doesn't want to be tied to Latin American server community in the future but probably will be really hard to pay 15/mo for an NA account. I know this is quite specific, but if I know my (type) people, I am not the only one. It'd be cool if, to the system described above, you add a "slot count" for multiple connections to one packaged account. You could make it so for the packages, a unitary login info, and then a limit count to instances logged in at the same time. There's not much difference (in the positive sense, without any cheats and tricks) playing as 4 different friends, family of 4 on the same house, or 4 different people from 4 different countries. At least to me.
Sorry if this didn't make much sense ^^ it's just an idea and you will know better at Intrepid if this is good or not. Happy birthday to me!
We all know that people don't even need a second computer to make it look like they have more than one. Virtual machines is a thing and if multi-boxing will have huge advantages, everyone will try to do that.
I have seen how disgustingly unfair multi-boxing can be. In ArcheAge it's quite hard to out-vote a hero who runs hundreds of alts and votes for themselves every month. People joined rifts with 10 accounts, auto followed their mains and did trade runs, put their alts on their ship's radar for solo trade run, which was actually a 20-men trade run but a solo one in reality...
The best way would be to design the game in a way where alts won't matter (much).
Mayor: Also, the whales could elect themselves or alter the voting.
Krojak always agrees with Intrepid on everything
As long people in the same house/same IP address can play the game together with no issues and solo players with extra hardware can't super funnel resources to disrupt the in game economy then I feel like Multi-boxing is okay.
Actually, aside from virtual machines being used to destroy the game's resource market, how would multiboxing not destroy the democratic elections of some towns/nodes/cities? The only ones that seem to be okay with multiboxing are the ones who would use it unfairly, tbh.
Well said. I can't wait to play this game and I am looking forward to playing with my wife.
With that said, you asked for ways how this could be prevented since there will be legit people playing behind the same IP. Do not put in a /follow command or any way for one player to autofollow another player. Without this it makes it a lot harder to have a boxed party since macros are also not allowed.
Barakas
The primary concern with multiboxing is players having multiple characters receiving cloned input and moving in sync with the primary character that the player is actually controlling. Using the well-known WoW example, there is a terrible plague of multiboxers destroying groups in PvP and inflicting significant injury on the economy because they essentially have multiplied power and control through cheating and real life money investment. They control one character, but third-party automation tools emulate the input and feed it into other characters, whether those be on separate virtual machine or not. Blizzard, shortsightedly, made the terrible mistake of allowing this form of botting.
Some people claim that Blizzard permits this misbehaviour because they financially benefit from it, but they honestly do not. The small amount of extra sub fee that they receive from allowing this is more than countered by the reduced sub count from others players, caused by a massive reduction in enjoyment in the game and confidence in it. The impact on immersion and game/developer reputation is very visible, and the direct player impact from multiboxer malice is self-evident.
With automated/cloned input banned, this issue that other MMOs suffer from will not be an issue for Ashes. If a player wants to swap between computers and control one character at a time, this is reasonably acceptable. They may gain some small benefit, but it requires extra effort and can be a hassle. It is automation and botting that I have concern with.
Thank you, Steven, for not permitting this.
P.S. - Enforcement should not take the method of infrequent ban-waves. When a player is caught through reports or systems detecting synced action/movement, punishment and prevention should occur immediately after the investigation confirms the abuse. Otherwise, the botters will reap enough in-game reward for it to be worth it to continue botting on new accounts after being caught in a delayed ban-wave. Swift action will deter recurrence.
I am not pro multiboxing either, but I also don't think it's worth the resources spend on trying to prevent it in terms of blocking people. We know it's not really effective.
Lastly, it can be attempted to prevent multiboxing from a design position; that you get little to no benefit from multiboxing. Make free items given my Intrepid for events and stuff not tradeable. My stance for alts is the same, everything should be account based, including dailies and the sort, so if you allow more more character slot purchases it doesn't become another p2w scenario.
However, Unlike alts - there are no strong ways to prevent much of multiboxing even from a design perspective.
if it's on 1 computer 90% of players could do it but that's 4 steps beyond that and too much of a dedication to ruin someone's account for
That. I would love to ban multiboxing, But I do not see any way to do this without casting too wide a net that would catch 0.1% true multiboxer (if even) and 99.9% normal players. It is not worth the cost and will not really catch anyone truly determined to do this anyway.
I mean with the referral system, you could technically? Can you buy game time with that?
Well my opinion on this matter.
For the specific case of Ashes I do think that multiboxing, in it's own way, would be pay to win. Why is that you ask?
Well for starters PVE it should be fine, (even tho I still don't like it), gathering spots could be a problem with one guy camping several important areas and even keeping an eye on bosses or even caravan pathways. A scout, but X5, X10.
Also mass tagging world bosses, rare spawns and grind areas.
But my problem comes down to PVP...
What will stop a person to have it's personal army to attack caravans, bounties? I bet people will find ways within the game with specific classes to get enough accounts that will let you one shot a player by simply using one skill x5, X10.
What about a seige? Will a player be able to control a whole platoon of players that, I don't know, spam heals/buffs? Or destroy a certain key structure to gain advantage by simply having 1 person handle 3-5 characters.
If I had the time/space/money to multibox in MMORPGs I would. It's passive income from your gatherer accounts while you play your main account, it improves your chance on winning PVP encounters of bigger and smaller scales (or nuke solo players) and let's you have multiple "spies" of caravan routes that will help them attack without delay, preventing normal players to make money/transfer their goods with some sort of fairness.
I don't like the idea of multiboxing, I don't feel it will be of any positive impact to the game besides extra money from them.
So please, if you do let them multiboxing, arrange a system that lets you keep track of these people and don't let them abuse their power in PVP, because once your PVP becomes boring, annoying and unfair, the game will die, because a MMORPG that is only PVE, the competition is gone, and so is the game.
Yours truly,