An argument for making multiboxing legal in Ashes of Creation

mcstackerson · April 1

I don't think how you plan on using it is a good argument to enable it for everyone since you aren't everyone.

I also agree that you aren't playing the game how it was intended. The purpose of group content is to encourage people to play with others which you are trying to circumvent.

koltovince · April 1

Every person multiboxing is reducing the amount of players who can play the game. Say there is a max population server and citizens of the riverland node are under war declaration and the attack will be 8:00 PM central. For every person multiboxing that is one less person able to defend their house, their node, their guild, and more because the multiboxer takes up slots for "their enjoyment".

I'm not saying this is going to happen often, but in a game where player interaction is key are we really going with the message players are allowed to potentially take away that interaction for others because they want to multibox?

Mag7spy · April 1

You will be right at home on lost ark

Songcaller · April 1

Mag7spy wrote: »

Song_Warden wrote: »

What I'm saying is allowed is one dude running a family by themselves, also running a freehold by themselves and running all the professions by themselves.

At no point do I want one dude using 8 toons in synchronisation because I've seen whole raids get wiped by one dude who multiboxes. Therefore, multiboxing is allowed from my perspective but cheating is another matter entirely.

Are you doing a April 1st meme or did you just not read the OP?

I'm not sure how to create a meme, but I was being facetious.

Telandras · April 1

Every person multiboxing is reducing the amount of players who can play the game. Say there is a max population server and citizens of the riverland node are under war declaration and the attack will be 8:00 PM central. For every person multiboxing that is one less person able to defend their house, their node, their guild, and more because the multiboxer takes up slots for "their enjoyment".

You can theorize all you like, and there's no way I could possibly counter arguments with unlimited hypotheticals. I doubt that any of these servers will fill up--the devs have basically outlined a "niche" game for purist MMO players. I think it's more likely that the devs will have to combine servers to keep reasonable levels of population active. As a player on any node, your ability to enjoy content could be dependent not just on the skill of other players on that node but also whether the node has enough people on it at all. What I expect they'll do is grade node progression on a curve: the metropolises are determined by the top five node activity rankings, within reason, so servers with 10000 active players and servers with 1000 active players will both be able to unlock the same bosses and content but with different character in terms of how the sieges feel. But, it's unlikely that logins for the server as a whole will cap due to the siege of one of its 85 nodes.

It reminds me of this debate I had theorizing class mechanics. We were splitting hairs and getting into needless debate over fleeting statistics. Same with the actions of one or two players during a node siege: how many are supposed to be there, forty, eighty, two hundred? If it were forty, and keystroke multiboxing were legal, a couple of multiboxers logging in could swing the balance, but if it were eighty, then probably not, and in any case we don't know how the sieges will really work except that "your army must be legion in number" and the node itself will have substantial defenses.

I just don't see this being a viable business model without introducing some collecting, farming, and solo elements to complement the crafting and PvP-able open world PvE content that maintains a broad and healthy player base. A body needs fat and viscera even though these organs would seem dull and unmoving at a glance. To have everyone playing the game for the purpose of being the greatest PvE guild or competing to maintain a fictitious political system is a pretty strong proposition, and regardless of how beautiful the graphics or intricate the node system I doubt that they'll be able to survive as a company without pulling in a bigger player base. If Intrepid has 80 employees (I've heard the number is actually over 100), then to pay them each $125K (about the baseline you need to live in San Diego) would run a $25,000,000 per annum tab (benefits and office space rental, amenities are all part of the cost). Add to that perhaps $10,000,000 per annum to maintain the servers for a player base big enough to generate the revenue stream they'd need, and assume that the average player is willing to pay $250 per annum for subscription and various in-game vanity items or character services. You'd need at least 140k such players to break even. And, how will the rest of the content, all the bosses that are supposed to spawn in different places or perhaps not at all, work out? Every boss encounter, from graphics to mechanics, requires a lot of tuning, and if that effort may or may not be experienced by some players I don't see how the final product can have all that much polish--just not enough labor to go around. So we're left with the node system and the political gears themselves which are at least the common foundation that every player will be using. I don't think there are enough purist MMO players out there who would be wooed for a long enough time by a fictional political phenomenon to keep this going.

My interests in multiboxing, as I said in OP, are collecting and maintaining a personal economy whereby I can assist guilds and other players as I like. Guild politics are inherently competitivve, and like your coworkers your guild mates are not really your friends. (They, like coworkers, can become your friends, but they are not your friends by default.) Things are great, awesome, just laid back and relaxed, looking to have some fun, until that one item drops and then everyone is vying for it. Deathbringer's Will was the trinket that broke guilds fifteen years ago in WoW. I took to collecting and multiboxing in part because it made raiding and guild politics optional. In Ashes it looks like they are throwing lots of that hard in reverse: no team, no game, very little middle ground.

I guess that's my purpose in starting this discussion: multiboxing for me was the solution to a lot of nasty politics in WoW. It made collecting and various achievements possible without the trolls, without the fights and scheming. But, it seems that the haters are as loud as ever, and their hope is that Ashes will make petty politics obligatory rather than be an escape from it.

Sathrago · April 1

Telandras wrote: »

I guess that's my purpose in starting this discussion: multiboxing for me was the solution to a lot of nasty politics in WoW. It made collecting and various achievements possible without the trolls, without the fights and scheming. But, it seems that the haters are as loud as ever, and their hope is that Ashes will make petty politics obligatory rather than be an escape from it.

This game is fully designed to have many ways to engage in politics so... you are trying to subvert a very important part of the game called player to player interaction. This is antithetical to the game philosophy, and any form of multi boxing has detrimental effects on multiple levels. They want you to need to go to another player for a specific craft or processing. They want people to be able to actually take up specialized roles that are needed in the world.

Lets make no mistake here either, I understand that people will probably purchase multiple accounts or have all their alts doing each profession. But theres a lot more work required for those things, and its not something you can stop without destroying peoples ability to play the game.

Aszkalon · April 1

Xeeg wrote: »

Ban multiboxers, hackers, scripters, and even the thread OP for even thinking about it.

Please not the Topic Opener, lol.
But jeah PLEASE prevent it like 100%. Don't let it be possible in the Game.

I see the other Comments and People give the best Reasons why Multi-Boxing shouldn't be allowed.

" I " myself also gave a good Reason, but feel free to ignore me. He heh, he heh. :-/ ^.^;"

- Multi-Boxing WILL ruin the Places for other People who want to be on the same Server but are already taken by the many Multi-Boxer Accounts.

I personally say it again,

jeah it will f°PEEEP° with Freeholds, will it ?

I can see it happen, Guys. I can see it happen from a Mile away. People who are either One Multi-Boxer or several, will EASILY cash in all the Gold, Money, whatever need, "to outbid" other People aiming also for Freeholds.

So People will lose their Ability to have a Place on the same Server ONCE the full Server-Capacity will be reached,
only so that "ONE OR A FEW PEOPLE" will have like +9 Accounts or so -> to gain themself an Advantage over other Players that can just not get called fair.

I would probably think different if i would be a kinda loaded Person who could do this Stuff. But i am not. So why should i myself think positively about People being able to do that ?

.

Telandras · April 2

Well, thanks to a number of you for your civility about this. As I said in the OP (and this is not an April Fool's), I can foresee various problems with multiboxing and suggested remedies from my own experience. It's obvious that with other stipulations the devs have in place (no macros, no addons, one client per machine, constant requirements of player attention to any given toon, i.e. no flight points or other features that allow a brief AFK) that multiboxing in any significant sense will be infeasible. Personally, I think that the devs would be well advised to look beyond the harcore gamer types and think about things that will broaden the game's appeal, and one class of those things is stuff that will provide reasons to re-run old content coupled with streamlining in the ways that players can access or experience that content. With all such changes comes the possibility to exploit, abuse, or find gimmicks in the systems. Multiboxing is not the only such emergent practice but it does share a lot of common threads and a long-term multibox subscriber will often be motivated by a completionist sort of mindset.

But, in order to maintain a player base, the devs will have to do something. They will have to weigh risk versus reward.

Arya_Yeshe · April 2

as a multiboxer who plays actual pvp with 5 accounts at the momment i will say: please, no multiboxing otherwise many people will end up like me

Ridiel · April 2

Well in my experience the only (but quite strong) argument for multiboxing is Constant group gameplay. Where you have an already working group of friends who play together as a 8 man squad and want to keep it like that. Nowadays since old school gamers are usually in their 30s and don't have time all the time is quite difficult to compete with no lifers. Thus being able to log each other and do group content even with those who could not log in this evening (easier since controlling 2 or more character will be difficult in AoC) is blessing for those groups because getting together consistently is nearly impossible. And thus even if the people are skilled enough to be competitive they would otherwise struggle to keep up with nolife groups.

But multiboxing should definitely be limited somehow to 3 for example to limit those crazy people who would log in 40 clients to do a raid or something.

Sinder · April 2

Please don't allow multiboxers, as soon as you do it becomes the "default" and everyone is expected to run 5 accounts for everything. It's awful and as has been pointed out removes a spot for an actual player.

Kilion · April 3

The reason why multiboxing is not allowed is that it defeats the sole purpose of a massive MULTIPLAYER online game. If someone wants to play with multiple units, thats fine. They can go buy a strategy game and play as many different units at the same time as they want instead of asking a single character game to allow them in there.

I honestly don't understand why there is even a reason to think about this any deeper than that. Maybe this is just me talking from the perspective of a GM but at some point I have to ask myself if people, who I briefed before on what the game will be, have any respect or interest in the work I have put in to make that game happen. When they are asking to allow/implement full on contradictory concepts into what has always been said to be the game, one can't help but get the feeling that people actually don't waste a single thought on asking whether their "demand" is by any stretch feasible.

Enough of me ranting, I think the idea of multiboxing has no place in a group focused MMORPG.

Aszkalon · April 3

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

as a multiboxer who plays actual pvp with 5 accounts at the momment i will say: please, no multiboxing otherwise many people will end up like me

Based.

And i am SAYING it again,

the MOMENT People will be allowed to play with +3 to +5 to +9 Accounts - ON - THE - SAME - SERVER - guess to which AAALL the Freeholds will be going to, if People will not SERIOUSLY stick together by trying to stand up against the Multi-Boxers aiming for the Freeholds.

It doesn't take a Genius to figure the Consequences out. 😁

Telandras · April 3

Aszkalon wrote:

Based.

MAGA gamer detected?

Anyway...

As I said above, I don't think that a horde of multiboxers would be real competition for freeholds, especially if the legality of the practice were limited in terms of accounts or some other simple system built into the game subscriptions. And, in any case, there won't be all that many multiboxers. As I said: they're a minority, and while it's not appropriate to compare them to any real-life minority they are maligned more than is warranted. The practice does carry great potential for abuse; this is why I led with suggestions on how to curb those possibilities while keeping open a means for people who want to do it without detracting from other players' experience.

That said, many of the abuses people have pointed out they would detest were multiboxiing allowed are allowed under the current policy, which strongly discourages the conceptual "pack of boomkins all moving in unison" that people associate with multiboxing (and which I have argued, within limits for those who like that sort of thing, should be legal).

Your node is under siege from 8:00PM to midnight tonight. Don't choke, but down in Jacksonville there's a fat guy with two days of salt-and-pepper stubble on his cheeks and skid marks on his underwear. He's been playing 14 hours a day and showering twice a week, dual-boxing on two accounts. One character is sitting in your metropolis watching the chat channels while the other is working as a lieutenant to feed that info straight up to the guys trying to break you.

Now let's imagine other variations on that, and see if they're more or less detestable.

Dua Lipa and Callum Turner are kicking back while his shows are in writing and her tour is revving back up. They've both been having issues with their online crowds, who now happen to be contesting who should rule their server, so they decide to pull a Mr. and Mrs. Smith and feed information to each other that makes the siege fail miserably. Then they both swipe their credit cards and hop to a new server. Each of them winks at their assistants, who are perfectly happy to kick back a couple evenings a week and do the hum-drum work of (re)building reputation for their characters on a new realm.

All of this is actually legal, and would be undetectable (or, at least, so hard to distinguish from legitimate business that Intrepid Studios would have to let it go). Personally, I like the system Blizzard implemented, where they allow macros (but without functionality like conditionals in the scripting) and, specifically, a /follow macro that breaks when PvP combat is happening. That's all one really needs to be the multibox train that most people envision--when WoW banned third-party key broadcasting I just went right back to that method, and people were still harrassing me and threatening to report for breaking the ToS.

But, I think this discussion is pretty much wrapped. Thanks all for your input, especially Ridiel for pointing out how it can, in a pinch and in moderation, fill gaps that let a group of friends continue to have fun even when one is out for the night.

Aszkalon · April 3

Telandras wrote: »

MAGA gamer detected?

The MAGA-Country Biome will be in the Alpha Two when Donald Trump gets re-elected. (lol)

There, we will smith and hit the hot Iron with either our Forehead, our Fists - or OUR D***'s !! And there is nothing that the screeching, shrieking Feminists who constantly scream things like toxic Masculinity can do about it.

Buy the hidden MAGA-Preorder Pack now. And get access to the Golden Shoes that fit one very Character of every Race and can be worn EVEN BY TULNAR with Hooves.

Telandras wrote: »

Anyway...

As I said above, I don't think that a horde of multiboxers would be real competition for freeholds, especially if the legality of the practice were limited in terms of accounts or some other simple system built into the game subscriptions. And, in any case, there won't be all that many multiboxers. As I said: they're a minority, and while it's not appropriate to compare them to any real-life minority they are maligned more than is warranted.

Wew.

I hope You are right and my somewhat-Worries and Concerns about Multi-Boxers cashing in all and every Content which is the most desired, is hopefully unfounded.