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
Which is why I'm saying that Intrepid could have multiboxing but also have it as a very difficult thing to benefit from. Just as a solo player "could in theory get a freehold" - multiboxers could "in theory" benefit from multiboxing.
Multiboxing is multiboxing. you can paint a pig any colour you want, it's still a pig.
Most of the threads and discussions on the forums is hypothetical theory crafting.. People not understanding language is on them.
If Steven lets players zoom out a lot, no wonder they end up willing to have a BG3 experience.
I don't know if multiboxing means only what you say. To me it means also that a player can turn 90° to his laptop to open the door for the other character which runs toward the base, gaining the advantage of not having to dismount and lose time while being chased by other players.
Any kind of advantage a player gets by owning two accounts, even if he has to alt-tab to a GeForce Now account, to me is unfair.
But the obvious cases will not be allowed, according to that discord post.
There's a lot of QoL features that can give advantages, especially if you play like a crane operator with your camera distance and field of view.
Funny thing is... who says it's limited to two.. could be three or four.
Could essentially buy four cheap pc builds and play the game on lowest settings possible for performance reasons. It just cant be run on the "same" computer. I wont bother going into details on ways around that.
There's a lot of functionality that can be accomplished through multi-boxing.
The discord post just suggests you have to do it through their conditions and potentially through their in-game/client account device. There's contradictions across the wiki, discord and dev updates constantly lol.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Multi-boxing
Multi-boxing is not the cheat. Botting is the cheat. Coding linked or autoplay behaviors is the cheat.
Pay to win was not really a topic of discussion back then as it is now.
I think I could say with reasonable confidence that the purpose within our guild of multi-boxing was to enable parties of 2-3 to be supported as a full group of 5 with the unfilled slots boxed with the necessary but unpopular classes to enable play. We as a whole would drop our boxed toon for a live player that could fulfill that role.
So, in short, it was seen as a means to be enable play when we wanted and not be stuck in town waiting 30-180min for a group to venture out. No healer, meant no play.. No buffer, meant restricted play. Tanks and DD`s being far more popular and so the ratios between player selection was out. Players that played healers and buffers were rare and in high demand.
I hope that AoC provides sufficient autonomy between class types and game play styles such that groups can function well with a variety of class combinations so the L2 scenario is not required and leads less to multi-boxing.
In theory you're paying for several accounts to essentially farm 4 times faster potentially regardless of drops and quest turn-ins regardless of when you hit that resource sink plateau at max level.
Solo player? not anymore. just spend more money on hardware, utilities and subscriptions! lol.
throw some combat pets on top of that, an 8 man group could essentially be ran by 3 people on average lol
Don't forget about aesthetically matching from our cosmetic shop, buy 4 times the cosmetics
As someone that has multi-boxxed in literally every online game I have ever played, all I can say is that you are speaking from a position of popular thought, rather than actual understanding.
As someone that absolutely refuses to use any macro unless built in to thr game itself, I can tell you that in a PvP setting, it is incredibly hard to make multi-boxing anything other than an outright liability.
A player multi-boxing and not using scripts has some very specific weaknesses that any smart player can take advantage of - the most obvious being multiple characters but the ability to only focus on one at a time.
Everything you've talked about I this thread is only really viable in games with little oversight in regards to macros.
If I run three mages in a game like Ashes, all you need to do to defeat that advantage is to keep the fight mobile, and then use any ability that controls movement of an opponent in any manner (root, pull, slow, teleport, bubble etc). If you control one mage and move the fight even a few seconds walk away, I now have to put almost all of my focus on to that character to move it back to my others. This leaves the rest of them vulnerable while my concentration is elsewhere.
It is worth pointing out that any more than three characters actually performing actions is either multiple people, or macros.
Now, this won't work as well if the player in question is using scripts or macros, but the issue then isn't the multi-boxing, it is the scripts and macros.
This is also why - despite literally everyone I know that played Archeage having multiple accounts, people didn't generally actually run multiple characters on content. It was a liability to do so.
It is also worth pointing out that the reason Intrepid are allowing multi-boxing is simply because when they put it to a vote, they did so pointing out that if it were against the rules, they have no way of detecting multi-boxing. They can detect macros and scripts, but not multi-boxing - there is no way to tell if two characters are one person on two computers, or two people on two computers.
it's definitely an opinion and I can essentially counter your points with the same logic you used.
I know about the vote. I remember and posted the link in previous posts. It was already well in the mindset of intrepid before the communities "input". So many contradictive decisions made over the years with hype and buzz words and vagueness lol.
Someone should make a youtube segment called "dev's say the darnest things" lol
Oh for sure, there are some.contradictions in this game.
Saying they will allow multi-boxing because they can't detect it, yet saying they won't allow combat trackers despite them having no way of detecting them is a massive contradiction.
The point stands, however, that the kind of multi-boxing you are talking about and (rightly, imo) don't want to see in Ashes simply won't be viable here.
If I saw someone multi-boxing, it would be a piece of cake to completely decimate them if they aren't using macros.
Sure,
skill issues and some designs can make it more difficult, but even the allowance of it is is a joke at best. I've never really saw many discussions or comments about how it's a good thing to allow lol. How is it beneficial for the game vs beneficial for the companies income lol. If games are surviving because of multiboxing allowances then maybe there is a reason for it. It's just another snowball for QoL. Even a blind person can see what's going to happen after the first year(s). History does seem to repeat itself. Perhaps there's no windows on the hype train and people just don't know where they're going lol.
Personally, I would never use it for the simple reason of integrity. Then for financial costs and stupidity that follows it.
Whalers welcome I suppose.
Multi boxing is also the cheat because you shouldn't be allowed to control 2 characters at once, it is not how the game is meant to be played. It encourages less people to play the game because your second character would be taking a position that a real life person should have, It breaks the game.
Intrepid can't stop it, can't detect it, and so them saying it isn't allowed is meaningless. Based on that, why would they make themselves look stupid by saying it isn't allowed?
Intrepid making more money from Ashes is directly beneficial to Ashes. If Intrepid have more money, that means more money to spend on additional content. Steven has directly stated that the post launch content schedule will be dependent on the games profitability - thus more profit for Intrepid literally directly results in the game being better.
The above said, you haven't actually given any reason as to how it would be bad for the game. Literally every time you have talked about multi-boxing in this thread, you have been talking about scripts and macros - not just multi-boxing.
With multi-boxing, people using scripts and macros are such a small part of it, and are so easily detected and acted upon that they really aren't where the discussion should be. If you want to say that you don't want people running scripts and macros, you won't find much of a discussion past everyone agreeing with you (myself and Intrepid included). Thus, when you talk about multi-boxing specifically in Ashes, you should be talking about it exclusively in the absence of scripts and macros.
Like most people that have never multi-boxed themselves though, I don't think you really know what non-script/macro multi-boxing looks like. To you, it would look no different than any other two or three characters running around together. People don't realise it to the point where in both Archeage and EQ2 I had totally different 'relationships' with many people on each character. The notion that they could be the same player simply doesn't occur to most people. I have no doubt at all that you would have come across multi-boxers in various MMO's without even knowing about it.
Point is, the bulk of MMO players probably don't even recognize a non-script/macro multi-boxer when they see one. A script/macro based setup stands out, but a single player running two or three accounts really doesn't.
Intrepid can stop and and can prevent it. This is how and is not too complicated in this day and age, in fact it has already been done and is being done on EQ private servers.
One account login per IP, meaning one account login per internet connection. When you connect to a WIFI and login to the game, no one else can then login to the game through that internet connection. There are exemptions, but new player identity must be proven by submitting a request containing the reason why you need another account on this network followed by the required evidence that the server management team requires.
And even then, isn't it super easy to fake your ip? So anyone who's serious about multiboxing would immediately go around this block, while anyone who just wants to play with several people under one roof would get fucked (or would have to, what, give several identification photos or smth?).
Well, the game restricts players to have one citizenship /account / server and also one freehold / account.
Some players will want to bypass those restrictions.
As long as this is done by a minority, the impact will not be felt. We will be able to enjoy the game.
The knowledge that some players do that can bother us but maybe we will never meet such players.
Nonsense, lol.
Multiboxing is dumb and allowing it is dumber. Nothing anyone says will make me change my mind.
I agree. Intrepid should also sell XP boosters and Money booster. But they are really expensive. They cost 15 dollars a month, ss long as this is done by a minority, the impact will not be felt.
The knowledge that some players do that can bother us but maybe we will never meet such players.
If you want a freehold, you pay even more
Think to the price we pay to be alpha testers. We can do it.
Yes, it benefits Intrepid financially. However, since Steven intends on expanding the game based on revenue, this means it also benefits the game.
Having an opinion you can't justify at all, and then claiming nothing will change your mind is literally why we have flat earthers.
Questioning is good, but questioning means learning answers. You are against the kinds of mass multi-boxing seen in WoW - but so is Intrepid. Since your question seems to be "why would Intrepid let this in the game?", and the answer to that question is "they aren't", your position seems to be unsubstantiated at this point.
Exactly. It doesn't benefit the game, just their wallets lol. The math is simple.
You can waste your time with self-entitled logic but it's not going to change my mind.
This is actually false. Multiboxing on the same server on runescape was a bannable offense, people forget this. Also multiboxers sometimes run multiple screens on the same computer, runescape stopped allowing this to happen, you could not log on from the same exact ip address on the same server.
Multiboxing gave people way to much of an advantage in pvp where all of a sudden 5 spells hit u at the same time and you die perfectly every time. Jagexs' way of detecting this was that consistently the boxes would cast the spell at the same time every time and yes action was taken against these accounts. Which im assuming often were also running illegal software.
Did they have a weakness? Yes aoeing them all at once often they fell like dominoes, but it is still an unfair advantage and doing it and defending it is just kind of sad to me. play on one account like 99% of the population.
Yes if you are a soial idiot you will not hae a LAN party beause you will not be able to ontat interpid to get an eeption
Right, so you aren't actually interested in serious discussion.
Yes, it is good for Intrepid financially, but that being the case is good for the game.
I mean, if Ashes isn't financially successful, Intrepid would likely need to sell it - probably to someone like Tencent or Kakao.
If you want Intrepid running Ashes, you want Ashes to he financially successful.
As such, you want Intrepid to do anything they can to make money from Ashes as long as it isnt disproportionately degrading the game experience.
You have not given a reason as to why multi-boxing without scripts or macros degrades the game experience for you (you have given reasons why scripts and macros do, however, and I agree with you on that).
As such, the logical actual opinion you should have, based on the information you have given and the assumption that you don't want Kakao running Ashes, is that you want Intrepid to allow multi-boxing.
However, since you obviously can't and won't say it, you will defend in to the above non-serious discussion.
Yeah, and this stopped me playing Runescape, because my brother was playing it. Back then I didn't know how to spoof an IP address, but now that is something that takes me perhaps 5 minutes - it isn't a deterrent at all any more.
I have since multi-boxed in Runescape purely out of spite. Like all other developers, they have no way of detecting it if you do it properly. You may want to note that since people were still doing this, the above IP ban you talked about - that i said don't work - were obviously not working.
That said, this is detecting and banning scripts, not multi-boxing. Most games (notably not WoW) do this, it isnt anything special. We can expect to see this in Ashes.
dont implement an auto follow function and make buffs durations really short, for example
PvP makes it inefficient.