The answer is 2 people are more efficient. No other difference!
And 2 people controlling 2 accounts each is even more efficient. That is the entire problem.
NO, It is only efficient when compared to a solo player. In a 2v2, a multiboxer controlling 2 characters will not beat 2 individual players playing 2 different characters.
Due to the nature of AoC, players will be found in groups so it wont be that difficult to find 2 man and 3 man groups.
So think of a 2-char multiboxer as a person playing with a friend. It is NOT easy to control 2 NON-IDENTICAL characters, simultaneously, without using any sort of software.
Multiboxing becomes a problem, when the no. of characters being multiboxed is GREATER than the average no. of players in a group, in the world.
This occurs with multiboxers with 7+ characters, as it becomes fairly difficult to find 6 man and 7 man groups of players in the world, to contest these multiboxers, because the large majority of players will either be soloing or will be in 2 to 5 man groups.
I love how the goal is to not have any P2W in AOC. However, paying for another subscription and using 2 accounts at the same time is paying real money to gain an advantage in the game. That is very much P2W.
I'm curious, is there any positive side to allowing multiboxing? There are clear cons, it gives an advantage over those who don't do it. Botting with it can ruin entire server economy, it takes away world resources and hoards them to one player, and it is borderline cheating in a PVP scenario. So there are clear good sides to not allowing it to fix those cons and issues. But what is the positive of allowing it? If multiboxing did not give any kind of an advantage, nobody would ever do it.
Allowing multiboxing should be reconsidered heavily. It is P2W.
In what way does multi boxing ruin an economy. Someone multi boxing is not going to be able to hoard resources anymore than a group or guild of players. You need to explain further how that is possible in AoC. Running around with a group of multi boxed accounts will not give an advantage for resources. If you happen to spread your characters out it will take time moving each character seperately to find gatherables. Maybe if you find multiple veins throughout the map, you could mine different areas at the same time, but not to the point that it will ruin an entire server economy. And thats assuming a non-interactive type system. It's not like you would have sole control over certain resources.
Also, how is it borderline cheating in PvP when you are at a disadvantage trying to jump from account to account to cast skills. A team of 5 people will always have an advantage over a person multi boxing 5 accounts. Same goes for 2v2, 8v8, whatever the number is. And I can't see many multiboxers running around gaining corruption on all their characters at the same time.
Again, they're not allowing multiboxing where for example if you press W on your keyboard, all 20 of your characters move forward. If you want to multibox, you'll need to manually control each and every character independently. That, in my opinion, is perfectly fine.
What? Lol. You realize the control of multiple toons is done player side, not game side? Or am I misunderstanding you?
I have read all of these multi-boxing posts and after some consideration, I feel that there are only 2 major problems with multi-boxing in this game.
1. With the implementation of the family system, It will give multi account players effective fast travel. This can 100% be considered pay to win.
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
I have no problem with multi-boxing if these two issues can be resolved.
This is under the assumption that any form of scripting will be a bannable offense and that the combat system is engaging enough that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to control multi characters at once.
I have read all of these multi-boxing posts and after some consideration, I feel that there are only 2 major problems with multi-boxing in this game.
1. With the implementation of the family system, It will give multi account players effective fast travel. This can 100% be considered pay to win.
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
I have no problem with multi-boxing if these two issues can be resolved.
This is under the assumption that any form of scripting will be a bannable offense and that the combat system is engaging enough that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to control multi characters at once.
Nicely summarized, agree that these are the only two legit P2W scenarios I've seen for Multiboxing.
I have read all of these multi-boxing posts and after some consideration, I feel that there are only 2 major problems with multi-boxing in this game.
1. With the implementation of the family system, It will give multi account players effective fast travel. This can 100% be considered pay to win.
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
I have no problem with multi-boxing if these two issues can be resolved.
This is under the assumption that any form of scripting will be a bannable offense and that the combat system is engaging enough that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to control multi characters at once.
Nicely summarized, agree that these are the only two legit P2W scenarios I've seen for Multiboxing.
Thank you. Steven said in one of the other discussions that the next dev discussion will be on multiboxing so I will repost my comment when that goes live. I would appreciate it if you like my post at the time so it becomes more visible to the developers.
I have read all of these multi-boxing posts and after some consideration, I feel that there are only 2 major problems with multi-boxing in this game.
1. With the implementation of the family system, It will give multi account players effective fast travel. This can 100% be considered pay to win.
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
I have no problem with multi-boxing if these two issues can be resolved.
This is under the assumption that any form of scripting will be a bannable offense and that the combat system is engaging enough that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to control multi characters at once.
The family teleport system will need to be addressed regardless of multiboxing.
It is a system ripe for outright exploitation.
As to freeholds, I am unsure how much of an advantage this will be, and is an issue with multi-account holders, not multiboxers (if I have two accounts, I have two freeholds, even if I don't multibox).
To me, this is the only potential avenue to advantage that having more than one account can offer, regardless of whether you can play both accounts at the same time or not. However, I am unconvinced that it will be all that much of an advantage.
Even the simple fact that freeholds can't be side by side somewhat reduces the value of having two.
One thing I will say, a multi-account user is the only person that has any chance at all of ever infultrating my guild as a spy. Without the ability to own multiple accounts, there will be no ability to spy.
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Undead CanuckMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
When I open my Freehold to my guild, technically everyone in the guild gets access to (at least) 2 Freeholds. Does that make it P2W?
I have read all of these multi-boxing posts and after some consideration, I feel that there are only 2 major problems with multi-boxing in this game.
1. With the implementation of the family system, It will give multi account players effective fast travel. This can 100% be considered pay to win.
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
I have no problem with multi-boxing if these two issues can be resolved.
This is under the assumption that any form of scripting will be a bannable offense and that the combat system is engaging enough that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to control multi characters at once.
The family teleport system will need to be addressed regardless of multiboxing.
It is a system ripe for outright exploitation.
As to freeholds, I am unsure how much of an advantage this will be, and is an issue with multi-account holders, not multiboxers (if I have two accounts, I have two freeholds, even if I don't multibox).
To me, this is the only potential avenue to advantage that having more than one account can offer, regardless of whether you can play both accounts at the same time or not. However, I am unconvinced that it will be all that much of an advantage.
Even the simple fact that freeholds can't be side by side somewhat reduces the value of having two.
One thing I will say, a multi-account user is the only person that has any chance at all of ever infultrating my guild as a spy. Without the ability to own multiple accounts, there will be no ability to spy.
The big problem I see with multiple freeholds is that Steven mentioned in interviews that the freehold will be integral in the processing portion of the artisan system. He hasn't mentioned the specifics of how the processing system works but if it works similar to real life processing plants, then an extra freehold will obviously correlate to a higher output of processed materials.
Proceeding with this train of thought, the worst possible outcome is far more sinister. If freeholds are that important to the processing of raw materials, wealthy players could buy out as many freeholds as they can on the server with different accounts and effectively corner the market, forming a bottleneck where players will have to go through them to craft anything in the game. This, of course, is the absolute worst case scenario but the possibility exists and needs to be brought to the devs attention so it can be designed around appropriately.
When I open my Freehold to my guild, technically everyone in the guild gets access to (at least) 2 Freeholds. Does that make it P2W?
This, of course, is not pay to win because no one is paying extra money to have an advantage. It is only pay to win when 1 player uses multiple accounts to buy freeholds to increase their personal processing efficiency.
The big problem I see with multiple freeholds is that Steven mentioned in interviews that the freehold will be integral in the processing portion of the artisan system. He hasn't mentioned the specifics of how the processing system works but if it works similar to real life processing plants, then an extra freehold will obviously correlate to a higher output of processed materials.
The thing here is that I don't see how an additional freehold could increase processing, unless the processing process is hands off.
This seems somewhat counter to what Intrepid are doing with the rest of the game.
If the processing system is one where you could place a stack of raw materials in an item and then come back in an hour, a day or what ever and have processed materials, then yes, there would be a definate advantage to having two freeholds.
On the other hand, if the processing process is actually active, and requires players to pay at least more than half of their attention to it, then a second freehold isn't going to increase your processing production at all - you need a second pair of eyes for that.
Proceeding with this train of thought, the worst possible outcome is far more sinister. If freeholds are that important to the processing of raw materials, wealthy players could buy out as many freeholds as they can on the server with different accounts and effectively corner the market, forming a bottleneck where players will have to go through them to craft anything in the game. This, of course, is the absolute worst case scenario but the possibility exists and needs to be brought to the devs attention so it can be designed around appropriately.
If this happened, those players that are affected by this bottleneck could just set up their freehold to be able to process that same material.
Seems like that would be a player that spent a whole lot of money to be ineffective at trying to be a bit if a dick.
The big problem I see with multiple freeholds is that Steven mentioned in interviews that the freehold will be integral in the processing portion of the artisan system. He hasn't mentioned the specifics of how the processing system works but if it works similar to real life processing plants, then an extra freehold will obviously correlate to a higher output of processed materials.
The thing here is that I don't see how an additional freehold could increase processing, unless the processing process is hands off.
This seems somewhat counter to what Intrepid are doing with the rest of the game.
If the processing system is one where you could place a stack of raw materials in an item and then come back in an hour, a day or what ever and have processed materials, then yes, there would be a definate advantage to having two freeholds.
On the other hand, if the processing process is actually active, and requires players to pay at least more than half of their attention to it, then a second freehold isn't going to increase your processing production at all - you need a second pair of eyes for that.
Proceeding with this train of thought, the worst possible outcome is far more sinister. If freeholds are that important to the processing of raw materials, wealthy players could buy out as many freeholds as they can on the server with different accounts and effectively corner the market, forming a bottleneck where players will have to go through them to craft anything in the game. This, of course, is the absolute worst case scenario but the possibility exists and needs to be brought to the devs attention so it can be designed around appropriately.
If this happened, those players that are affected by this bottleneck could just set up their freehold to be able to process that same material.
Seems like that would be a player that spent a whole lot of money to be ineffective at trying to be a bit if a dick.
You are assuming they have the ability to buy their own freehold. There is only a set amount freeholds available on the server and if you have multiple individual buying, 10, 20, or even 30 freeholds on different accounts the amount of freeholds available will quickly dwindle and, in turn, the price of freehold slots will sky rocket.
As for how the processing system functions, no one knows the details of this so we can't make arguments either way. All I am saying is, if there is any form of time requirements related to this system then having multiple freeholds will undoubtedly be a massive benefit.
You are assuming they have the ability to buy their own freehold. There is only a set amount freeholds available on the server and if you have multiple individual buying, 10, 20, or even 30 freeholds on different accounts the amount of freeholds available will quickly dwindle and, in turn, the price of freehold slots will sky rocket.
You don't buy it, you place it - although technically you can buy them from other players.
Either way, there will be place for several thousand freeholds on each server.
In order for one player to have an impact on that, they would need substantially more than 30 accounts.
You are assuming they have the ability to buy their own freehold. There is only a set amount freeholds available on the server and if you have multiple individual buying, 10, 20, or even 30 freeholds on different accounts the amount of freeholds available will quickly dwindle and, in turn, the price of freehold slots will sky rocket.
You don't buy it, you place it - although technically you can buy them from other players.
Either way, there will be place for several thousand freeholds on each server.
In order for one player to have an impact on that, they would need substantially more than 30 accounts.
I guess this is a debate of scarcity. From what has been said, the servers are built around concurrent player numbers between 8-10k. Now if there are similar or larger number of freehold plots available then you are probably right and it wouldn't be much of an issue. However, I was under the impression that free holds had a far lower availability and that they would be the most expensive node housing a player could buy. Even if there are upwards of 4-5k freehold locations, having players buy multiple freehold would drastically increase the land price for freehold plots and lead to rich players creating housing monopolies in specific nodes.
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Undead CanuckMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
But people have said that having access to more than 1 Freehold is P2W.
And first you say that access to multiple Freeholds is bad. Then you tell me that opening mine up is okay. That means people have access to more than 1. You cannot have it both ways.
You are assuming they have the ability to buy their own freehold. There is only a set amount freeholds available on the server and if you have multiple individual buying, 10, 20, or even 30 freeholds on different accounts the amount of freeholds available will quickly dwindle and, in turn, the price of freehold slots will sky rocket.
You don't buy it, you place it - although technically you can buy them from other players.
Either way, there will be place for several thousand freeholds on each server.
In order for one player to have an impact on that, they would need substantially more than 30 accounts.
I guess this is a debate of scarcity. From what has been said, the servers are built around concurrent player numbers between 8-10k. Now if there are similar or larger number of freehold plots available then you are probably right and it wouldn't be much of an issue. However, I was under the impression that free holds had a far lower availability and that they would be the most expensive node housing a player could buy. Even if there are upwards of 4-5k freehold locations, having players buy multiple freehold would drastically increase the land price for freehold plots and lead to rich players creating housing monopolies in specific nodes.
The most expensive housing a player can *buy* are the largest in node houses.
The thing with people trying to create housing monopolies in a specific node is - it won't work.
If one player has 30 freeholds in one node, that is 30 less people performing activities that are generating experience for that freehold. It is also less materials and such that are then able to be easily bought and sold in that freehold, which means even less experience.
The end result of this is that it is likely to lead to node atrophy - actual deleveling of the node due to not enough experience being generated within it to simply maintain the level that it is at.
If this happens, all of those freeholds will lose potential resale value - and potentially even just be removed if they are in an area that is no longer in the nodes ZoI due to it losing a level.
I mean, the situation we are talking about here is unlikely to ever happen in the first place, but if it did, it would generate a fairly substantial loss for the player that attempted it.
But people have said that having access to more than 1 Freehold is P2W.
And first you say that access to multiple Freeholds is bad. Then you tell me that opening mine up is okay. That means people have access to more than 1. You cannot have it both ways.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will answer assuming you are not. The definition of P2W is a player using real world currency to gain an advantage over players in the game. In this case, that would be paying for multiple accounts to get access to multiple freeholds and thus gain a crafting advantage over other players. You letting others access your freehold is not pay to win because noone in the scenario is paying extra money to gain an advantage. Literally anyone who plays the game and joins a guild would have access to the same thing without spending more money.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will answer assuming you are not. The definition of P2W is a player using real world currency to gain an advantage over players in the game.
Here is a question for you though, is anyone with two or more accounts gaining any advantage that they are not actually working in game towards?
If not, then I would suggest that anything such a player has in game is something they have earned in game - which is decidedly not pay to win.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will answer assuming you are not. The definition of P2W is a player using real world currency to gain an advantage over players in the game.
Here is a question for you though, is anyone with two or more accounts gaining any advantage that they are not actually working in game towards?
If not, then I would suggest that anything such a player has in game is something they have earned in game - which is decidedly not pay to win.
I'm a bit confused on what you are asking me here. Games are all about working towards specific goals and in every game you must work towards that goal. To determine if something is P2W you must decide if by paying real world currency, you can lower the amount of work necessary to reach that goal. Now it entirely depends on how they design the freehold system if it will be a problem and in that regard we are effectively debating about how we think the system will work and not how it will work in practice because we haven't played it. All I am attempting to say is that the developers need to keep in mind that the a possibility for abuse with the freehold system exists and that it is something to be aware of in the design process. As i stated in the first post, I don't care about multi-accounting or multi-boxing if they make sure to design appropriately around the family and freehold system and ban all forms of scripting and botting. I think a lot of people on the forums are overreacting because of the multiboxing in WoW but that is simply because WoW decided to excuse scripting to bloat their player numbers.
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Undead CanuckMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
But people have said that having access to more than 1 Freehold is P2W.
And first you say that access to multiple Freeholds is bad. Then you tell me that opening mine up is okay. That means people have access to more than 1. You cannot have it both ways.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will answer assuming you are not. The definition of P2W is a player using real world currency to gain an advantage over players in the game. In this case, that would be paying for multiple accounts to get access to multiple freeholds and thus gain a crafting advantage over other players. You letting others access your freehold is not pay to win because noone in the scenario is paying extra money to gain an advantage. Literally anyone who plays the game and joins a guild would have access to the same thing without spending more money.
You specifically said:
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
But pretty much everyone in the game will get access to multiple Freeholds. How is that P2W?
So what if I pay for another account for the extra Freehold. That means that I now have access to 30 instead of 29 (me being in a guild...). Since it costs me more real cash as well as in game cash (taxes), how is that a problem?
I can do resource processing at any Freehold. And (as far as I know) they have never said that there will be automatic processing. From what I have read, you will have to be there to process it. That means that I am spending the same amount of time processing as anyone else.
If they have said there is automation, can I get a citation so I can read up on that as well?
But people have said that having access to more than 1 Freehold is P2W.
And first you say that access to multiple Freeholds is bad. Then you tell me that opening mine up is okay. That means people have access to more than 1. You cannot have it both ways.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will answer assuming you are not. The definition of P2W is a player using real world currency to gain an advantage over players in the game. In this case, that would be paying for multiple accounts to get access to multiple freeholds and thus gain a crafting advantage over other players. You letting others access your freehold is not pay to win because noone in the scenario is paying extra money to gain an advantage. Literally anyone who plays the game and joins a guild would have access to the same thing without spending more money.
You specifically said:
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
But pretty much everyone in the game will get access to multiple Freeholds. How is that P2W?
So what if I pay for another account for the extra Freehold. That means that I now have access to 30 instead of 29 (me being in a guild...). Since it costs me more real cash as well as in game cash (taxes), how is that a problem?
I can do resource processing at any Freehold. And (as far as I know) they have never said that there will be automatic processing. From what I have read, you will have to be there to process it. That means that I am spending the same amount of time processing as anyone else.
If they have said there is automation, can I get a citation so I can read up on that as well?
Edit:
Sorry for the wall of text.
Again, this is true if the availability is high enough and everyone in your guild owns a freehold. I spent the last 10 minutes looking through the wiki and there is a set number of freeholds available for purchase in a node's zone of influence and they can only be made in rank 3 nodes or higher. This means multi accounting is guaranteed to create some form of artificial scarcity. How problematic the scarcity will be is entirely dependent how many total plots there are, how many total multi account players there are and how much of an advantage having multiple freeholds is. Now if there is no game play advantage to having multiple freeholds then my point is moot and its effectively just paying for an extra cosmetic. They have not given any information on how processing functions other than it is tied to the freehold system. We dont know if there is a time related component to processing. We don't know if you have the capability of creating all types of processing building on 1 freehold. If no time component exists and you can do everything on 1 plot it will most likely be fine. From the start if have simply been saying that there are possibilities of the freehold system being abused if it is not designed properly. I specifically said "It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win." the key part is resource processing output. If the freeholds give no advantage in terms of resource output then there is no problem.
To determine if something is P2W you must decide if by paying real world currency, you can lower the amount of work necessary to reach that goal.
This is a definition of pay to win that is essentially the same as mine.
As an experienced boxer, I can say outright that buying a second account doesn't lower the amount of work necessary to achieve any goal - unless the game in question has specific mechanics ro facilitate this.
Ashes doesn't.
If I had two freehold, the only way I would get any benefit from the second one is if I work them both to their fullest.
In what way does multi boxing ruin an economy. Someone multi boxing is not going to be able to hoard resources anymore than a group or guild of players.
But you do realize that you just added more players vs that one player? We can go the same direction, and then compare a guild made out of multiboxers into a regular guild. You absolutely will get more resources out of the world with multiboxing, especially because of limited fast-travel. A single character can only be in 1 place at once. If you know that some type of resources spawn in place A, and also at place D, traveling from A to D is time consuming. And that time consumer does not exist for a multiboxer whose another character is already there.
I love how the goal is to not have any P2W in AOC. However, paying for another subscription and using 2 accounts at the same time is paying real money to gain an advantage in the game. That is very much P2W.
I'm curious, is there any positive side to allowing multiboxing? There are clear cons, it gives an advantage over those who don't do it. Botting with it can ruin entire server economy, it takes away world resources and hoards them to one player, and it is borderline cheating in a PVP scenario. So there are clear good sides to not allowing it to fix those cons and issues. But what is the positive of allowing it? If multiboxing did not give any kind of an advantage, nobody would ever do it.
Allowing multiboxing should be reconsidered heavily. It is P2W.
Personally, I have 2 accounts in every game. Mainly because my primary account will have a lot of associations and will have demands on my time because I am a walking library and have issues enforcing personal boundaries when I get requests for help. So my secondary account is always my secret 'I just want to follow my own whim' account if I need the downtime.
I will admit that I often farm resources this way, but not by using both accounts at the same time. That is not fun to me.
First off, there is no real way in stopping multiboxing. Those who want to do it, will do it. Does not matter if you allow it or not. The only thing it would do, is it would punish legit people that want to play together and happen to live in same appartment (husbands/wifes, roomates whatever).
The real issue is with macros/scripts that allow to control multiple accounts with one keyboard/mouse (like in WoW, I see 10 druids multiboxed and simultanuosly doing same thing - this stuff is ridicilous). But if I understood correctly, this wont be allowed and if detected, would ban people.
Anyway, whats with this herd mentallity in forums lately? Someone says something and then all of a sudden I see countless threads about same `dont do this, dont do that, it will ruin a game` thing. And mostly without giving any solid arguments against one case or another.
I think the problem is that multi boxing is not straightforward to identify. It could just as easily be a couple playing together.
What needs to be outlawed is mass boxing. In WoW classic there was a guy boxing maybe 10 alts.
I do believe that the numbers multi boxing will be low enough that it maybe won't be a big enough problem to put sustained effort in to. If it was simple to identify then maybe.
I am confused at the definition of modern-day multi-boxing.. Does multi-boxing no longer mean, One person playing Multiple Accounts at the same time... cause That IS multi-boxing and that is a form of P2W but multiple accounts played by multiple people from the same IP or House does not mean it's multi-boxing...
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Undead CanuckMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I am confused at the definition of modern-day multi-boxing.. Does multi-boxing no longer mean, One person playing Multiple Accounts at the same time... cause That IS multi-boxing and that is a form of P2W but multiple accounts played by multiple people from the same IP or House does not mean it's multi-boxing...
Multiboxing is playing separate accounts on separate computers without using scripts. No software or hardware to have 1 keypress or mouseclick do multiple things.
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And 2 people controlling 2 accounts each is even more efficient. That is the entire problem.
NO, It is only efficient when compared to a solo player. In a 2v2, a multiboxer controlling 2 characters will not beat 2 individual players playing 2 different characters.
Due to the nature of AoC, players will be found in groups so it wont be that difficult to find 2 man and 3 man groups.
So think of a 2-char multiboxer as a person playing with a friend. It is NOT easy to control 2 NON-IDENTICAL characters, simultaneously, without using any sort of software.
Multiboxing becomes a problem, when the no. of characters being multiboxed is GREATER than the average no. of players in a group, in the world.
This occurs with multiboxers with 7+ characters, as it becomes fairly difficult to find 6 man and 7 man groups of players in the world, to contest these multiboxers, because the large majority of players will either be soloing or will be in 2 to 5 man groups.
In what way does multi boxing ruin an economy. Someone multi boxing is not going to be able to hoard resources anymore than a group or guild of players. You need to explain further how that is possible in AoC. Running around with a group of multi boxed accounts will not give an advantage for resources. If you happen to spread your characters out it will take time moving each character seperately to find gatherables. Maybe if you find multiple veins throughout the map, you could mine different areas at the same time, but not to the point that it will ruin an entire server economy. And thats assuming a non-interactive type system. It's not like you would have sole control over certain resources.
Also, how is it borderline cheating in PvP when you are at a disadvantage trying to jump from account to account to cast skills. A team of 5 people will always have an advantage over a person multi boxing 5 accounts. Same goes for 2v2, 8v8, whatever the number is. And I can't see many multiboxers running around gaining corruption on all their characters at the same time.
What? Lol. You realize the control of multiple toons is done player side, not game side? Or am I misunderstanding you?
1. With the implementation of the family system, It will give multi account players effective fast travel. This can 100% be considered pay to win.
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
I have no problem with multi-boxing if these two issues can be resolved.
This is under the assumption that any form of scripting will be a bannable offense and that the combat system is engaging enough that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to control multi characters at once.
Nicely summarized, agree that these are the only two legit P2W scenarios I've seen for Multiboxing.
Thank you. Steven said in one of the other discussions that the next dev discussion will be on multiboxing so I will repost my comment when that goes live. I would appreciate it if you like my post at the time so it becomes more visible to the developers.
The family teleport system will need to be addressed regardless of multiboxing.
It is a system ripe for outright exploitation.
As to freeholds, I am unsure how much of an advantage this will be, and is an issue with multi-account holders, not multiboxers (if I have two accounts, I have two freeholds, even if I don't multibox).
To me, this is the only potential avenue to advantage that having more than one account can offer, regardless of whether you can play both accounts at the same time or not. However, I am unconvinced that it will be all that much of an advantage.
Even the simple fact that freeholds can't be side by side somewhat reduces the value of having two.
One thing I will say, a multi-account user is the only person that has any chance at all of ever infultrating my guild as a spy. Without the ability to own multiple accounts, there will be no ability to spy.
The big problem I see with multiple freeholds is that Steven mentioned in interviews that the freehold will be integral in the processing portion of the artisan system. He hasn't mentioned the specifics of how the processing system works but if it works similar to real life processing plants, then an extra freehold will obviously correlate to a higher output of processed materials.
Proceeding with this train of thought, the worst possible outcome is far more sinister. If freeholds are that important to the processing of raw materials, wealthy players could buy out as many freeholds as they can on the server with different accounts and effectively corner the market, forming a bottleneck where players will have to go through them to craft anything in the game. This, of course, is the absolute worst case scenario but the possibility exists and needs to be brought to the devs attention so it can be designed around appropriately.
This, of course, is not pay to win because no one is paying extra money to have an advantage. It is only pay to win when 1 player uses multiple accounts to buy freeholds to increase their personal processing efficiency.
This seems somewhat counter to what Intrepid are doing with the rest of the game.
If the processing system is one where you could place a stack of raw materials in an item and then come back in an hour, a day or what ever and have processed materials, then yes, there would be a definate advantage to having two freeholds.
On the other hand, if the processing process is actually active, and requires players to pay at least more than half of their attention to it, then a second freehold isn't going to increase your processing production at all - you need a second pair of eyes for that. If this happened, those players that are affected by this bottleneck could just set up their freehold to be able to process that same material.
Seems like that would be a player that spent a whole lot of money to be ineffective at trying to be a bit if a dick.
You are assuming they have the ability to buy their own freehold. There is only a set amount freeholds available on the server and if you have multiple individual buying, 10, 20, or even 30 freeholds on different accounts the amount of freeholds available will quickly dwindle and, in turn, the price of freehold slots will sky rocket.
As for how the processing system functions, no one knows the details of this so we can't make arguments either way. All I am saying is, if there is any form of time requirements related to this system then having multiple freeholds will undoubtedly be a massive benefit.
This.
Either way, there will be place for several thousand freeholds on each server.
In order for one player to have an impact on that, they would need substantially more than 30 accounts.
I guess this is a debate of scarcity. From what has been said, the servers are built around concurrent player numbers between 8-10k. Now if there are similar or larger number of freehold plots available then you are probably right and it wouldn't be much of an issue. However, I was under the impression that free holds had a far lower availability and that they would be the most expensive node housing a player could buy. Even if there are upwards of 4-5k freehold locations, having players buy multiple freehold would drastically increase the land price for freehold plots and lead to rich players creating housing monopolies in specific nodes.
And first you say that access to multiple Freeholds is bad. Then you tell me that opening mine up is okay. That means people have access to more than 1. You cannot have it both ways.
The most expensive housing a player can *buy* are the largest in node houses.
The thing with people trying to create housing monopolies in a specific node is - it won't work.
If one player has 30 freeholds in one node, that is 30 less people performing activities that are generating experience for that freehold. It is also less materials and such that are then able to be easily bought and sold in that freehold, which means even less experience.
The end result of this is that it is likely to lead to node atrophy - actual deleveling of the node due to not enough experience being generated within it to simply maintain the level that it is at.
If this happens, all of those freeholds will lose potential resale value - and potentially even just be removed if they are in an area that is no longer in the nodes ZoI due to it losing a level.
I mean, the situation we are talking about here is unlikely to ever happen in the first place, but if it did, it would generate a fairly substantial loss for the player that attempted it.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will answer assuming you are not. The definition of P2W is a player using real world currency to gain an advantage over players in the game. In this case, that would be paying for multiple accounts to get access to multiple freeholds and thus gain a crafting advantage over other players. You letting others access your freehold is not pay to win because noone in the scenario is paying extra money to gain an advantage. Literally anyone who plays the game and joins a guild would have access to the same thing without spending more money.
If not, then I would suggest that anything such a player has in game is something they have earned in game - which is decidedly not pay to win.
I'm a bit confused on what you are asking me here. Games are all about working towards specific goals and in every game you must work towards that goal. To determine if something is P2W you must decide if by paying real world currency, you can lower the amount of work necessary to reach that goal. Now it entirely depends on how they design the freehold system if it will be a problem and in that regard we are effectively debating about how we think the system will work and not how it will work in practice because we haven't played it. All I am attempting to say is that the developers need to keep in mind that the a possibility for abuse with the freehold system exists and that it is something to be aware of in the design process. As i stated in the first post, I don't care about multi-accounting or multi-boxing if they make sure to design appropriately around the family and freehold system and ban all forms of scripting and botting. I think a lot of people on the forums are overreacting because of the multiboxing in WoW but that is simply because WoW decided to excuse scripting to bloat their player numbers.
You specifically said:
2. It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win.
But pretty much everyone in the game will get access to multiple Freeholds. How is that P2W?
So what if I pay for another account for the extra Freehold. That means that I now have access to 30 instead of 29 (me being in a guild...). Since it costs me more real cash as well as in game cash (taxes), how is that a problem?
I can do resource processing at any Freehold. And (as far as I know) they have never said that there will be automatic processing. From what I have read, you will have to be there to process it. That means that I am spending the same amount of time processing as anyone else.
If they have said there is automation, can I get a citation so I can read up on that as well?
Edit:
Sorry for the wall of text.
Again, this is true if the availability is high enough and everyone in your guild owns a freehold. I spent the last 10 minutes looking through the wiki and there is a set number of freeholds available for purchase in a node's zone of influence and they can only be made in rank 3 nodes or higher. This means multi accounting is guaranteed to create some form of artificial scarcity. How problematic the scarcity will be is entirely dependent how many total plots there are, how many total multi account players there are and how much of an advantage having multiple freeholds is. Now if there is no game play advantage to having multiple freeholds then my point is moot and its effectively just paying for an extra cosmetic. They have not given any information on how processing functions other than it is tied to the freehold system. We dont know if there is a time related component to processing. We don't know if you have the capability of creating all types of processing building on 1 freehold. If no time component exists and you can do everything on 1 plot it will most likely be fine. From the start if have simply been saying that there are possibilities of the freehold system being abused if it is not designed properly. I specifically said "It give multi account players access to multiple free holds which are directly associated with resource processing output. Again, this is 100% pay to win." the key part is resource processing output. If the freeholds give no advantage in terms of resource output then there is no problem.
As an experienced boxer, I can say outright that buying a second account doesn't lower the amount of work necessary to achieve any goal - unless the game in question has specific mechanics ro facilitate this.
Ashes doesn't.
If I had two freehold, the only way I would get any benefit from the second one is if I work them both to their fullest.
But you do realize that you just added more players vs that one player? We can go the same direction, and then compare a guild made out of multiboxers into a regular guild. You absolutely will get more resources out of the world with multiboxing, especially because of limited fast-travel. A single character can only be in 1 place at once. If you know that some type of resources spawn in place A, and also at place D, traveling from A to D is time consuming. And that time consumer does not exist for a multiboxer whose another character is already there.
Personally, I have 2 accounts in every game. Mainly because my primary account will have a lot of associations and will have demands on my time because I am a walking library and have issues enforcing personal boundaries when I get requests for help. So my secondary account is always my secret 'I just want to follow my own whim' account if I need the downtime.
I will admit that I often farm resources this way, but not by using both accounts at the same time. That is not fun to me.
Yep
iron, amber, wood and bone.
The real issue is with macros/scripts that allow to control multiple accounts with one keyboard/mouse (like in WoW, I see 10 druids multiboxed and simultanuosly doing same thing - this stuff is ridicilous). But if I understood correctly, this wont be allowed and if detected, would ban people.
Anyway, whats with this herd mentallity in forums lately? Someone says something and then all of a sudden I see countless threads about same `dont do this, dont do that, it will ruin a game` thing. And mostly without giving any solid arguments against one case or another.
What needs to be outlawed is mass boxing. In WoW classic there was a guy boxing maybe 10 alts.
I do believe that the numbers multi boxing will be low enough that it maybe won't be a big enough problem to put sustained effort in to. If it was simple to identify then maybe.
Multiboxing is playing separate accounts on separate computers without using scripts. No software or hardware to have 1 keypress or mouseclick do multiple things.