Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Maybe you just havn't looked hard enough
It doesn't matter how hard I look, I can't see things that are not there.
You've put more time in to trying to get me to find them than it would have taken you to just quote yourself. As such, I have to assume you know you have said nothing at all as to how non-script, non-macro multi-boxing is bad for a game like Ashes.
In fact, your refusal to even state what those reasons could be tells me that you know they aren't actually valid, and won't stand up to basic scrutiny.
I know you well enough to know that if you thought you had a valid argument, you would have reiterated it by now.
Have you tried reading the entire discussion?
That's the problem. You want me to personally cater it to you like I'm your secretary when I said no matter what you say about it that it will never change my stance on multiboxing. I get you're in favour of it considering peoples histories playing games that allow it regardless of severity. I'm really not in the mood to write a damn thesis breaking it down when the reasons are so presently obvious of why multiboxing is stupid.
Hypothetically,
if you clone yourself and work at the same job, making the same wage filling two positions over the same duration as you and the clone, what rate would be acquiring income?
twice as much as equal parts until you start funneling.
Translate that through quest rewards and everything else you can essentially do as a multiplication value depending on how many clones you can operate. It exponentially increases over the same duration.
It doesn;'t matter how much a person down plays it with excuses like skill, collision, scripting nuance etc. Multiboxing is multiboxing. Botting is an issue, but not all multiboxers bot. If multiboxing wasn't significantly beneficial, people wouldn't be so keen to use it.
You've literally played games with as you declared when you jumped into the discussion when you did. Which means... you know first hand the advantages using transactions even if indirectly as a subscription can increase the frequency of efficiency.
Now I'll admit, this doesn't always apply to a consistency and you can be my guest to counter it with whatever personal opinion to defend it by all means but it will never change the fact of what it is and how it can directly impact systems regardless of sinks due to the tactical advantage it gives you regardless of PvE or PvP.
If intrepid wants it in their game then good for them I guess.
it's evident over the years how many games have allowed it to secure lost subscriptions and income similar to how games allow microtransactions as they slowly introduce leniency to retain profit margins. If you lose 25% of your players but you allow 25% to multibox... looks like you've met your goals.
They're literally putting in snowballs to roll down the road as the games player base plateaus and becomes more accepting of the shit sandwich they're going to be eating every day... crust on or off.... it's still a shit sandwich.
I'm not saying it will fail but it's just taking a different path towards a well known destination.
If you have 10 clones of yourself, that means you need 10 more beds and bedrooms for them, 10 more meals three times a day, 10 more wardrobes full of cloths, 10 more cars, 10 more of literally everything.
Moving things back to an MMORPG, if the game is balanced around the notion that a character running content gains gold needed to progress their character, then two characters running content gain gold needed to progress both characters.
When you actually break it all down, the only actual advantage a player gets from multi-boxing while questing and such is that they can level two characters in about 145% of the time it takes someone to level one. That is the sum total of the gain of this line of thinking you have here - if you want to argue how horrid that point is, have at it.
No game has ever successfully prevented it. It isn't that games allow it, it is that they realize they literally have no way to detect it, and thus no way to stop it.
I literally guarantee that you have come across people multi-boxing in games and you just assumed it was two people playing the game together. That is how multi-boxing looks to players, and it is how it looks to developers.
Again, the reason I didn't play Runescape back in the day wasn't because Jagex prevented multi-boxing, it was because at the time I was unaware of how easy it was to get around. Others knew how easy it was, but I didn't. I wasn't even trying to multi-box, their stance at the time just outright prevented me even playing the game.
If you can't see how actually bad that is for a game - literally preventing people in the same house playing a game together - then I'm not sure what else to say. Even then, even with that draconian measure intended to prevent multi-boxing, it still failed. It hurt the game, and didn't ever actually do the thing that was intended.
This is why no one has a stance against it at all. Ok, so, ignoring the merits of it existing or not existing, how do you stop it without actually negatively impacting the game?
No joke, if you come up with a viable way to make this happen, you'd be able to make hundreds of millions, perhaps even (no joke) billions of dollars from it. It is a problem that has stumped literally everyone for decades, and no one has a solution.
Thus, if we ignore merits for and against, without an actual method to prevent it, we have literally no other option.
I think it is utterly rediculous that we don't all have flying cars by now. We were promised them decades ago, and yet I can't buy one if I tried. I can jump up and down and complain about this all I like, but that isn't actually going to solve the issues that are the cause of why we don't have flying cars.
Likewise, you can jump up and down all you like about multi-boxing, but without a solution to the issue that makes multi-boxing a fact of online gaming, all you can do is jump up and down screaming to yourself.
My honest suggestion (to literally everyone, literally all the time) is to do the best with the things you can control, and just accept the things you can't.
Yes and sinks will plateau, players will out pace the game. The economy is in the hands of players for the most part. You stop it by preventing it and even not allowing it in the first place. Leniency snowballs.
Intrepid isn't paying me 6 figures a year to figure their shit out for them lol.
As for flying cars... we clearly know why it's a bad idea by just looking at society as a whole regardless of country lol. An imbalance of ideologies.
In a funny perspective.. isn't a flying car the same as a driving plane?
Sometimes the carrage gets put before the horse. I can see them going back on some those household rulesets for devices, accounts, identifications of hardware and isp. They can try and policy it up as much as they can but theyre essentially trying to prevent something that is already ahead of horse. They can allow multi boxing but not family or friends playing together at same location to prevent risks that are essentially much lower now than players imagined because of design changes already in place from hype train discussions.
Players will find a way as technology is quite more significant in our daily lives. worried about cheating? stream sniping? someone texting a friend? private stream? all because of an in-game design that only has a significant role once every few weeks or so depending on the players per node. The game design has put an impractical weight for a game that is PvE driven with low risk and medium reward variables compared to what was originaly pitched during all the buzz and hype years ago
but anyways.
I'm pretty close to the point of saying fuck Mmorpgs because of player base mentality that keeps the genre in the same loop. It's getting worse as next generations assimilate into the hive of current expectations. Doesnt matter how shiny the game is or its engine.. it usually just amounts to the same shit.
At it's core, the issue you are talking about here (consistent, accurate identification of people online) is the single greatest issue facing almost all internet security professionals - and has been for about half a century when the basics of the internet were first demonstrated.
This isn't the sort of problem that is solved by someone on a six figure salary - it is a problem that literally needs the entire internet to be scrapped and rebuilt to solve. This isn't the player base mentality being in some kind of loop.
This is you drawing a line in the sand that is in a place that is literally impossible for anyone to meet. When you draw lines, you need to be sure it is possible for them to be met, otherwise you'll be disapointed and probably just blame everyone else (developers, MMO players etc).
If this is honestly where your line is to be drawn, then yeah, perhaps just abstain from anything online. I mean, quite honestly, you don't even know if I have a second account on these forums I'm posting from. People reading this don't actually know for sure if you and I are the same person or not. It's just how things are, and there is no way to stop it.
Explain to me how Intrepid are going to stop that. If I want to multi-box, if I am on different physical computers, all going through different IP's through different ISP's, how can Intrepid detect that?
All of that is without even using the base level tactic of IP and MAC address spoofing, which are things that Intrepid have literally no means of detecting at all. It also isn't using the newer VM methods that have so far gone undetected. Literally the only way they can detect that is if they maintain a list of MAC addresses and IP addresses, and look for people logging in to accounts from different computers. The thing then is - that will only ever "catch" a multi-boxer if they make a fairly big mistake, yet will catch many hundreds (or thousands, or tens of thousands) of legitimate players out. I mean, your suggestion here completely eliminates anyone wanting to play Ashes if their ISP using dynamic IP addresses rather than static, as their account would be logging on from a different IP address every day (or week, or month, depending on the ISP).
How many innocent accounts are you willing to ban in order to have a shot at banning one multi-box account when that multi-box player makes a mistake?
I men lets not pretend that with a simple look at someones history ingame that it's hard to determine multiboxing from other individuals following you and playing.
I doubt a good excuse is "My friends all auto followed me for 3 weeks and just did whatever i told them to do" sometimes you don't need to be a rocket scientist cracking codes to find these things out. If AOC decide to ban multiboxing it's hardly an issue of "wellll wee don't know if those 5 accounts are actually one person or not. They do, we all do.
At least you can agree cheaters like the ones i posted need to be banned, we're going to have to wait for actual AOC to make a final decision on this, being it's alpha still... nothing is final.
5 accounts at once (assuming you are talking about in combat) would require scripting. Having 3 at once is the limit for people not using any scripting (or other tricks).
And it actually is hard to determine a multi-boxer from other players. If autofollow was the key, if developers were investigating everyone that used it, they wouldn't have looked at me at all in Archeage because I literally never used it while multi-boxing for combat (as explained above, auto follow can be a liability). I did, however, use it on occasion for follow friends if we were heading off but I needed to do something real quick.
It is probably also worth pointing out that even if you multi-box, you are probably going to be playing each character by itself for at least some period of time - people botting perhaps don't, I can't really speak as to how they go about things.
I mean, multi-boxing doesn't even need to have characters in the same location. Perhaps I am off fighting on one character, working in my freehold on a second, and browsing the market on a third. That is giving me even more of an advantage than having three characters fighting in PvP in a game like Ashes.
Banning multi-boxing isn't actually viable. All Intrepid can do is say you aren't allowed, and then look on knowing many people are anyway with no way to tell those that are multi-boxing from those playing the game with friends.
In EQ2, my main wore starting rags even at max level (before transmogs were a thing) - not all characters care about wearing expensive clothing or using purchased pets and cosmetics.
You're not wrong with that example technically. It was just a hypothetical because people could whale especially if they want to match without in-game earned rewards. Cosmetics aside, if you want to be efficient with your multiboxing, a player would have relatively decent gear for all their characters. One would essentially be gearing them evenly and any excess materials or currency would funnel to your main.
It's why I mentioned they'll probably be taking steps back on certain restrictions and allowing more leniency over time. That was the whole carriage before the horse thing for the most part. There's a lot of things they can say, attempt and/or do but that doesn't mean that's how it will be. Restrictions and invasive detection can only go so far especially with the design changes in place during development. It eventually gets challenged with practical sense scenarios of "why can we do this but not this" "I'm a patron" etc.
So yes, they either take TOS and penalisation serious and try to contain it or they allow snowballs to boulder over time and deal with the weight of the outcome until they keep compromising to manage it.
The thing is, you are looking at there only being two possibilities, which is literally only ever the case with US elections. With everything else in the world, there are a multitide of different approaches.
In Ashes, for example, it is unlikely that questing will be much of a revenue generator - at least not in comparison to the earning potential of someone at end game. The game is built around the economy, making basic questing a viable way to spend time earning, while being repeatable (even if only repeatable on alts) would be a fairly major mistake. This means players are unlikely to run alts or multi-box quests for profit.
Combat in Ashes is likely not going to be conductive to multi-boxing do to the ease of breaking a multi-boxing setup in PvP. There is a reason multi-boxing setups only run content that would be considered mind-numbingly easy for a regular group of players of that size - you simply can't handle anything complex.
This leaves the above scenario I talked about above as being the only viable method of multi-boxing in Ashes. One character fighting, one working in the freehold (or crafting in general), and one looking at the market.
I mean, with what we currently know of how the game is being designed, that is the limit of what a multi-boxer is able to viably do. Someone fighting, while also occasionally making an item, and perhaps every 10 - 15 minutes looking up an item on the market.
The horror.
It's always an option lol. Choices are full of duality and nuance in direct comparison of spectrums.
Not enforcing TOS has been the decline of many games and being the route for enabling that behaviour. It clearly doesn't mean people wont attempt it or break the TOS. No denying there is ways around it technologically.
That's not really the actual depth multiboxing plus you can run your freehold from an app offline regardless if all accounts are linked lol. There will more than likely be scripting so some degree or the whole multiboxing is a complete hypocritical idiocy and contradiction to not allowing players from the same house to play the game on the same ISP address or not. Would just make the devs seem stupid af to supporters. Again.. which is why they're probably going to take steps back. carriage and the horse..
Sure having your screen split into "multiple boxes" is how it's utilised but the boxing also implies controlling several characters with some degree of script and macro regardless of how easily it is to switch between screens. It is also a direct reference to shadow boxing.
They're choosing to go down the snowball route which has a plethora of tangents for multiple snowballs to boulder. Just watch the magic happen lol
Many would enjoy a game like this where players game with integrity, didn't cheat, use technology to communicate outside of the games parameters etc. But the reality is... welcome to 2023. You'd need a tight knit community of like minded people for each server to get that kind of experience these days and even then I am confident someone would still try to cheat by whatever degree lol
Reality vs Expectations
See, you DO understand after all.
At the end of the day, the actions Intrepid can take are limited by what is possible - all the money Steven has does not make the impossible possible.
People will cheat - this is a given. Intrepid can work on detecting the cheating that is possible to detect, and then ban it. That is great, and I expect them to do so. This is why we are unlikely to have large bot groups in Ashes - that is able to be detected and so only exist in games that explicitly allow them.
When it comes to things they can't detect though, they have no way at all of taking any action. You can't take action on something you don't know is happening. This isn't a route they can chose to not go down, it is simply the only option.
Again, there is no option to ban multi-boxing, as there is no way to detect it.
This is the same reason why we have email and phone scams that no one seems to be able to actually shut down. Why we have people attacking government infrustructure from all over the world without the ability to just block their access. If you pinpoint the exact device one of these attacks is coming from, it will take them seconds to be up and running on a new device, and you ahve no way at all of knowing who it is, or if it is the same person, or anything.
This is why I said earlier that this is the major internet security issue around the world - it literally is something government acronyms around the world have been trying to solve for decades, with no success.
Some guy on a six figure salary working at a game company isn't going to solve this issue. Intrepid are not going to solve this issue.
I definitely got it earlier than this lol just took this long for you to get it that I already got it
Reporting it is essentially a first step for many if they make it against TOS. WoW found ways to ID and track inputs that were less than natural to determine if people were botting but their leniency and allowances like many other games just enabled it and eventually lost control. You'd need high powered AI to be running detection algorithms in real time which is very expensive regardless of quantum concepts in processing. Anti cheats are embedded but there's away around those obviously. Lots of code monkeys these days, usually the bad cheaters get caught lol. Most businesses in the worlds wouldn't be able to afford such tech for daily use especially video games.
The whole lack of enforcement, laws and other nonsense due to inconsistent ideologies across the world cause many problems. I dont want to get into politics and what not.
Why give information out for free when someone on a payroll is cashing in on it. I'd expect any citizen of a capitalist country to get that much. I mean people are even trying to patent stupid shit like the abbreviations / acronyms for every day things like orange juice... what a world...
People multi-box without botting, and bot without multi-boxing.
Talking about preventions for botting in a discussion about multi-boxing is about as applicable as talking about botting in a discussion about PvP design.
Detecting botting is fairly easy, and has been a known thing for a few decades. There is the usual back and forth with this as there is with anything like this, but generally speaking, botting shouldn't be a thing in Ashes.
Blizzard eventually gave up on the whole thing - their reasoning being that they were spending money in order to ban accounts and earn less money in a game where players had proven they generally didn't care enough about botting to leave due to it. Essentially, they were spending money in order to make less money - as a publically traded company, Blizzard have a legal obligation to do what ever they can to make the most money they can for their shareholders. With this in mind, if people aren't leaving WoW due to bots, Blizzard literally can't spend money fighting them.
As long as Ashes is making money, Intrepid isn't a publically traded company. As such, Intrepid can spend money on things if Steven wants to spend money on them. If he wants to spend essentially his money detecting bots in order to ban them so they pay him less money, he is free to do that. It isn't a case of laws - it is the fundamental design of the internet.
Earlier this year (iirc) a particular southern state in the US put up some restrictions on specific R18 websites, where people in that state needed to have state verified ID in order to access such sites.
Two things happened. The first is that some websites did nothing - since they are in countries that the laws in question simply don't apply to, they didn't need to do anything. The other thing that happened is that some other websites did comply, and set up a requirement that anyone attempting to access their site from that state needed to have the ID required.
People just used a basic VPN to get around it, and there is literally nothing anyone can do about it.
Laws and rules mean nothing when the technology doesn't allow for them to be enforced.
One clearly needs software and pathing through softwares for multiboxing and script detection for inputs to figure that out. Lots of things can be detected through the input and outputs of key binds, macros and scripts. Botting is essentially similar to scripts. I honestly don't even know why I need to explain this to you lol. Different OS handle EAC's different too.
No, the lack of enforcement and proper penalisation is part of the problem. I don't even understand how one can even fathom that with decades of evidence in the industry clearly supporting it. Players not reporting it are also part of the problem. It's a literally simple.
VPN's can be detected. They don't protect people as much as they're lead to believe.
This is why companies pay for cyber security and tech specialists to manage detections within business and why data centers would need high end AI. Humans couldn't analysis and counter it fast enough let alone legalities to get past encryptions of personal devices. Best most of them can do is software detection like EAC in sync with client server detection on their end for legal reasons.
I honestly don't know why you're wasting my time with this stupid shit. lol.
Worst part is you're wasting your time more.
I pointed out that technology isn't up to the task at hand, and gave an example of how easy it is to get around laws that technology can't detect.
You are the one that then ran with VPN's as a valid point of discussion here.
They aren't, which is why I'm not wasting my time talking about them outside of the example above.
I'm not sure why you would bring EAC in to a discussion about multi-boxing. It isn't even designed to detect it other than in one specific form that almost no one uses in AAA MMO's - multi-client on a single computer. If that isn't what you are doing (no one is doing that), then EAC is simply a non-factor.
In-game Report, trackers, inspect logs, analyse, detect, evaluate, conclusion and if concise, penalisation.
Once again, players and developers have no means of defferentiating between one person playing two accounts, and two people each playing their own account.
Please explain to me how you would know I am multi-boxing if you and I are grouped together, and I am off on my other character occasionally crafting. I'm just running the same content as you, as one character, and during downtime I am pressing a few bottons on the computer beside me, potentially performing an action in an entire different region (ie, NA on one, EU on the other - a fairly common thing to do in Archeage).
If you want to say that developers should rely on players reporting others, explain to me what possible reason you would have for reporting that.
Ie he prob things you can use alt accounts to follow you as backpacks to carry more items and give them the best bags you can. As an example.
Words do have meanings.
Yours don't seem to, quite honestly.
You keep saying you think Intrepid should do a thing that isn't possible. You say people should report things they can't even see. When you start saying things like this, your words do indeed cease to have meaning.
The only thing Intrepid can do about multi boxing is actually go in on abilities that require some precision, not put a follow on.
But who cares if someone stalks the market on an alt account.
People will play the game as it, with accepting also our follow gamers as they are. Or don’t play the game, then people will not be inconvenienced by the presence of others.