What I question with the current stance is the ability/accuracy/reliability of detecting those who do try to use automation/botting techniques. How easy will it be for people to get around such detection? If it's unknown, questionable or easily side-stepped, I do not think multi-boxing should be allowed.
The question is somewhat misleading as I don't think you should really categorize/view having multiple people playing from the same IP as 'multi-boxing' and this might have skewed how people vote as who isn't in favor of letting all family members play without getting banned?
I'm personally not in favor of multi-boxing as it could have a huge impact on the game's economy, freehold slots, etc. There shouldn't exist an automatic system that bans players who share the same IP but you should create a system that can track a user's action and flag players who are potentially multi-boxing for manual review. I don't think multi-boxing should be encouraged in any form and considering that ashes have a subscription on top of a slow leveling progression banning a player should be quite a punishing deterrent for multi-boxers as long as you can locate them. As people have mentioned in the thread it should be really hard if not close to impossible to completely prevent multi-boxers but I think it's important to take a stance against it and punish whenever it's noticed rather than letting it run rampant.
Since combat is an action hybrid it should be quite hard for multi-boxers to use it for combat purposes, but considering the 64 class combinations and that you can have up to 75% tab-target skills I'm sure they will find a way to be effective in combat, even if it's only as support. I'd also advise against having a 'follow' function in-game.
In general, I think multi-boxing has a higher chance of being a potentially bad thing for the game than something good, if you need to play on multiple accounts at the same time to be engaged there might be something wrong with the gameplay. I'm sure the devs are creative enough to think up a good solution to dealing with the potential problems that could occur.
As long as the multiboxers aren't "cheating" then i don't see a problem with it. With AOC having actual GMs that can monitor things i think that well help this.
From my personal experience with my friends and I, I have only really saw a tank with pocket healer or random Bots farming things.
But regardless, with banning multi-boxers i dont think it will be a big deal.
I don't see any harm in allowing people to multibox. It's their own way of playing the game.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
For every solution to prevent cheating and unfair play, there is often someone on the other end with a legitimate reason to be do X.
For example prevent account sharing by blocking different ip addresses used on the same account.
In my case, I might be in 3 different places round the globe in one week, and might make an attempt to play for a short time from any of them. I work from 2 completely different global locations that couldn`t be further apart. Yet, just me!
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Ah.. and part of this multiboxing thread.. can this be the last and final one!
IDK if this has been discussed already but here I go.
To me it all comes down to how "buffers" are gonna work in the game, if they are something like Lineage2's then no, and im sorry for the people who play in family or with roommates, but having a buffer that can potentially increase a characters power by 40% its just gamebreaking for everybody else. On the other hand if buffs are gonna work like in wow (1 per class or something like that) then I wont have any problems with allowing multiple accounts per IP.
As someone suggested earlier, a good way to stop ppl from multiboxing is making gathering more dynamic, like a mini game, otherwise is so easy to leave a character in gathering spots and once in a while click on a "plant".
The more active a character have to be in order to do anything the harder it is to do something on two PCs. Avoid dead times ingame (fishing in BDO, crafting in FFXIV, enchanting in some chronicles of L2)
For Freeholds, yes, u could get more than 1 (pretty impressive farming BTW) but u still wont be able to defend it if ur node loses a castle, so could work only for a little time.
I really don't see a problem if it is just one guy having two accounts and running them at the same time on two computers. To me that is no different than two different people grouping together. I suppose the only benefit is that one person can benefit one character with money gained from two, but I do think that benefit is neglible when compared with the effort put in to controlling two characters.
You also have to consider the ease by which a multi-boxer can be identified. Can any checks the game might perform tell the difference between one person boxing and a couple playing the game together?
What I do feel needs to be outlawed in Ashes is bottling, and by that I mean using external programs or in game commands to control a character. I also particular dislike extended multi-boxing of more than two characters. In WoW Classic I came across a guy botting 12 characters. That should be impossible without bot commands.
The question is whether tools utilised in Ashes can reliably spot botting. Any tool has to be perfect, but I have confidence following Steven's answers on spotting gold farmers. It sounds like Intrepid have worked hard to create reliable tools to spot behaviours that are better not in the game.
To summarise, I see no problem with what would be a small number of people running two accounts because I think the benefits do not hugely outweigh the efforts. I do, however, feel that the use of external programs and/or botting should be combated. A character should be played by the player that owns an account, not by a piece of software.
I must also make a distinction between botting and the use of simple commands in game, such as /assist tools, should they exist in Ashes.
running multiple instances of game is nowhere near cheating or p2w, in the end you will split your time to play multiple accounts in non-automated manner.
Allowing use of multiple PCs (which wouldn't be possible to block anyway) and in the same time disallowing boxes on same PC creates obvious disadvantage for these who have just 1 PC and would want to have extra account for any reason.
Since we cant effectively block multiple PCs use, best solution would be to allow 2 instances of game on same PC.
Finally I'm able to post my opinion on the forum! Happy day! I hope it's not so late it gets swept under the bus. This post is a response to all of the people saying 'sure, why not allow it'. It's meant to be partly a tale of caution, and also offer a solution.
Multiboxers have the opportunity to play the game, even without macros and scripts, in a way that other players physically can not compete with them. If a multiboxer is playing as few as three accounts at 75% efficiency compared to a single normal player after one twelve-hour gaming session the multiboxer will have achieved twenty-seven hours of progress. One person could not hope to compete with this even if they forego sleep and food.
The design principles behind Ashes of Creation are largely player-driven and competitive. Getting your node to the next tier before another one captures yours as a vassal capping it. Upgrading the node's defensive capabilities if you believe you are going to war, and especially after a war declaration. Cornering the market at all stages of production for a particular good to create a monopoly in your community. Voting for yourself as mayor could also be an issue for obvious reasons. Hoovering up freehold slots and holding them hostage until forcibly taken, just to name a few things. If this was any other game that did not heavily rely on what people are doing in the world multiboxing would not be an issue at all! The implications of multiboxing on the economy and node based system are far greater than anything else.
Multiboxers under your current allowance gain their advantage within a game through down time between actions. If the gameplay is pressing E to watch an animation that wait time is their bread and butter while working on low-risk artisan skills especially. Every second they have to do an action on another account is valuable to them. If the gameplay itself involving questing, crafting, exploration, and so on was active and engaging gameplay the advantage would be minimized significantly. Obviously, we do not know if the only way to participate in PvE artisan skills is press E to wait four seconds. If there is even a little more depth to it that would make it difficult to replicate on five, ten or more accounts at once that would be perfect. It appears that combat and PvP as already achieved this and will naturally not be the traditional wait-to-cast-tab-targeting-frenzy that is easily exploitable via multiboxing.
Having been one of these whales in the past on other MMOs I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge the gameplay experience for people that put themselves through the trouble of multiboxing. If a game developer does not actively deter or at least express repercussions of catching someone multiboxing many players will be put in an awkward position. Through the often competitive player-driven experience you are advertising a lot of players will do it because it is the only way to compete at the absolute highest level. Even if they don't want to or despise it themselves certain players will recognize it is the only way to out-compete another person or group of people. If you can't beat them, you must join them. The experience of grind and burnout and enjoyability of truly interacting with the content will be lost on those people, and I believe for many of them through no fault of their own. They're just trying to play the most efficient way possible and keep up with others also doing so.
I appreciate the current stance on multiboxing and would find it acceptable if it had to stay that way. However, I feel actively endorsing it through the rules is problematic. I understand from a policy perspective it is hard to enforce a total ban on multiboxing, but I genuinely believe it's in the best interest for a game like this to not allow it at all. Banning people who script and macro, and giving warnings to people who you rarely catch doing it the old fashioned 1:1 action route with no manipulation. Telling people repercussions will be handed out for those caught doing it will stop enough of them even if they aren't technically cheating.
Edit: Some grammar.
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xXBelocXxMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I think that multiboxing is perfectly fine as long as systems are in place to prevent exploitation of game mechanics that give the "account holder" an advantage such as macro programs, key stroke creators, etc.
With that being said I personally think that multiboxing in general takes away from the overall quality of the game for that person but this is a personal opinion. Ultimately a person will "play" a game in whatever way they want and as long as that way doesn't A)Provide advantage over the game vs other people or B)affect other players game play in a negative manner then thats there choice.
i believe people will abuse claiming land with multiple accounts via the freehold system and also use their multiple accounts to hog gather areas? I'm sure these would both be some of the big issues multi-boxing would cause. The problem is how the hell do you restrict multi-boxing enough to stop or mitigate these issues to the max while not hindering family or friends playing from the same house/building? A middle ground will need to be found, I think its more important to protect the game's economy rather than trying to please everyone.
I have the same issues with multiboxing and I agree with the principle of puting the economy of the game first. Certain resources (freeholds and in-node housing) are hard limited per account, and the reason I suppose is to balance the power of players, so that noone will get the revenue of 2-10 freeholds while others are stuck with 1. Multiboxing would completely bypass this restriction. Even with the prerequisite of one account per computer, many people (including me) possess two computers already, and even two accounts are twice as much revenue from freeholds. So I think multiboxing shouldn't allow people to have access to more real estate, if it can be managed I see no other significant problem with it.
Ideas for solution:
Since I definitely wouldn't want to cause trouble for people playing from the same household, I think the best would be to extend the scope of the already planned system of anti-goldselling. An automated system could signal if there is an unusual amount of one-sided transfer of goods happening between accounts, and if they are happening from the same IP there should be some penalty applied.
Why are MMO populations so socialist? If a person wants to run a hundred accounts on one box. Let them. How is that different then a guild of 14k people? Because it's one person? That's just jealousy.
As long as there is no macros or third party software allowed then let it be and don't risk false positives. False positives will kill the community more than a multi-boxer.
I'm new to MMOs, played a few, none more than a year or so. I thought multiboxing was having shared chests between characters lol.
I have to say I agree with restrictions I guess, mainly because I live in a house with 7 people and I know at least 3 who will play, maybe 4. I will be playing, my wife, my brother and my son may start playing MMOs soon. We may not all play at the same time and if we do it will be separate computers but the same house internet.
I still may not be getting what multiboxing is so then ignore my post.
... I feel actively endorsing it through the rules is problematic. I understand from a policy perspective it is hard to enforce a total ban on multiboxing, but I genuinely believe it's in the best interest for a game like this to not allow it at all. Banning people who script and macro, and giving warnings to people who you rarely catch doing it the old fashioned 1:1 action route with no manipulation. Telling people repercussions will be handed out for those caught doing it will stop enough of them even if they aren't technically cheating.
100% Agree - even if it's hard to track, the stance that it's allowed makes me feel like I need to buy multiple accounts to compete fairly. I've been down this road in WoW with multiboxing 8 accounts and while it becomes very efficient & profitable, it's not really the same game anymore. I think taking a hard stance on scripts/bots is a good start and only allowing 1 client per computer is good as well. Telling people that they can have separate accounts on separate computers playing at the same time is fine - but when I think of multiboxing I think of me playing on the same PC with 8 mages running around blowing everything up with 1 button, not me having 1 account out grinding with another account sitting in the town socializing/trading.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Whilst I have toyed with many MMORPG`s, I have only spent a lot of time in a few.
Lineage 2 - if you were not on at peak time and/or did not play in a very large clan or have lots of friends online, then a second account was a fantastic but annoyance to have to play immediately
ESO - I never found a need
BDO - never found a need
NW - although beta, didn`t see a future need
From my view, it comes down to the utility a second account befits and if there are shortfalls/benefits in the game systems/mechanics that lead players to desire to branch out.
I have two different experiences with Multiboxing: Retail World of Warcraft, and EVE Online.
In EVE Online when I was actively playing, I had two accounts. This was back when each account was subscribed separately. I didn't have any macros or switches, I manually had to switch between each window and control each ship separately. I mainly used it to mine minerals and ice (one miner, on hauler), as combat I think would be too hectic to control. In this instance, I have no problems with a person controlling multiple accounts at the same time as long as their is no automation between accounts. If they want to spend the time and money to do so, more power to them. Literally.
My recent World of Warcraft experiences with Multiboxing is a person with multiple accounts flying around a zone with 5, 10, 20 different characters farming materials. One account is the primary, the other 19 are on follow. When reaching a gathering node, the primary account and 19 following characters all harvest the node at the exact same time. My problem here is obviously there is no switching of active characters or additional time required to have every one participate in the world. In the time it would take me to harvest 3 of a resource, it would give the other person 60. That .. just isn;t good.
So yeah, I have no issues with multiple accounts controlled by the same person as long as there is no automation involved: every movement and action must be performed independently of each account. Otherwise, I do not want to see multiboxing in this game.
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RokoMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
In my opinion Multiboxing from separate machines; with separate inputs for each account is a good measure.
As long as we don't see people going around with multiple characters moving, and doing actions at the same time or within a couple ms of each other because they have somehow managed to mirror the keystrokes from a single input device to multiple characters. I can learn to live with it.
There is still stuff that multiboxers can exploit even with these measures like having fast travel by making a family among their accounts and just teleporting themselves is one such issues. There is also enabling people to avoid socializing in order to complete social activities. Although these are annoying in my opinion they aren't game breaking to my experience.
I see other issues though these are not inherent to multiboxing but instead to multiaccounts. Such as multi freeholds. Granting a single person the ability to double their real state is imo a pretty big deal. There i also bypassing cool downs and mechanics that are account locked (for a reason). But that's for a different topic.
you guys need to realize, that multi-PC boxing can't be technically stopped, so we are not debating here if it will be there or not - it will. We should reconsider lifting full restriction of 1st PC, so having possibility to run 2nd account is NOT exclusive to these with 2 or more PCs, because since they cant be stopped, allowing everyone to login +1 account would mitigate that disadvantage.
Scenario where it would be useful (happens daily in Lineage 2): you play with own party of friends from beginning, you progress together, gear together, pvp/pve together and join one clan to work inside (called constant party in L2 meta). When one of your friends can't login for some reason you get kinda blocked without possibility to login 1 extra box on your PC, inviting random from shout wont be solution as you aim to progress together in own group.
I hope the mods can take a look at what multi-boxing can turn into. Note this is wow that already has a high cost of entry with the cost of the expansion AND a monthly sub cost. Yet this person plays up to 131 accounts. You can check his stream vod history for further examples of this type of game play. This is how multiboxing can become incredibly overpowered. While this is allowed in WoW on 1 computer, you can get Pretty high numbers with VPNs and virtual machines unless there have been advances to detect that type of game play.
Yes, but how many external programs does that guy use?
Could he reliably do that without the use of bot commands?
How many people have the resources/money to do that?
If he can manage 3 characters with no external tools, just him going back and forth between keyboards, then all the power in the world to him. I am sure there must be some loss if efficiency in that scenario.
Whilst I have toyed with many MMORPG`s, I have only spent a lot of time in a few.
Lineage 2 - if you were not on at peak time and/or did not play in a very large clan or have lots of friends online, then a second account was a fantastic but annoyance to have to play immediately
ESO - I never found a need
BDO - never found a need
NW - although beta, didn`t see a future need
From my view, it comes down to the utility a second account befits and if there are shortfalls/benefits in the game systems/mechanics that lead players to desire to branch out.
Man you have never played archeage. I bet u havent play lineage 2 properly as well. On bdo the devs have made the game on such a way that multiboxing is useless since u cant trade.
So yeah, I have no issues with multiple accounts controlled by the same person as long as there is no automation involved: every movement and action must be performed independently of each account. Otherwise, I do not want to see multiboxing in this game.
The issue is a matter of playtime. I said it in my post but I will say it again here as a stand-alone comment because it's so important to clarify the issue even with this take.
"Multiboxers have the opportunity to play the game, even without macros and scripts, in a way that other players physically can not compete with them. If a multiboxer is playing as few as three accounts at 75% efficiency compared to a single normal player after one twelve-hour gaming session the multiboxer will have achieved twenty-seven hours of progress. One person could not hope to compete with this even if they forego sleep and food."
The numbers are made up, but this is really a simple example considering the lengths some people will go to for multiboxing. Even if the actions are perfectly legitimate there is no way to physically compete with a multiboxer, and this game by definition lends itself to competitive gameplay. I'm not just talking about PvP and all that entails but being a fellow EVE player I'm sure you're aware of the implication on the awful arms race multiboxing becomes at the higher ends of gameplay when a dev decides to publically state it's an acceptable way to play the game.
Yes, but how many external programs does that guy use?
Could he reliably do that without the use of bot commands?
How many people have the resources/money to do that?
If he can manage 3 characters with no external tools, just him going back and forth between keyboards, then all the power in the world to him. I am sure there must be some loss if efficiency in that scenario.
Steven has already said that his vision for resource gathering is that it will be fairly afk. In that case, it doesn't take much effort to control 15+ accounts that simply sit at resource nodes and with 1 click of the node gather for possibly minutes at a time.
Steven has already said that his vision for resource gathering is that it will be fairly afk. In that case, it doesn't take much effort to control 15+ accounts that simply sit at resource nodes and with 1 click of the node gather for possibly minutes at a time.
He has also said that resource nodes will vary location.
His characters can also be killed at any time by any player. Good luck keeping all those characters safe. In that respect the community can police things well enough.
In any event I feel the number of people wanting to box like this will be rare.
I find it odd that multi-boxing is even up for debate considering you hate all pay to win and pay to convenience features.
As a multi-boxer myself I know first hand how detrimental it can be, our guild in classic WoW is required to have at least 1 account of the opposite faction purely for greifing our own faction. (I know this isn't a perfect example, but there will be similar situations in Ashes). $15 a month is a very low barrier of entry for a lot of people, the issue isn't so much that 1 person may have 3-4 accounts, it's when entire guilds have 3-4 accounts.
I will admit that I am unsure how you could effectively police multi-boxing if someone is in fact using a different computer, as only allowing 1 game client to be running per IP / Router would be really painful for a lot of the community. Me included as my fiancee and I both play games together in the same room.
I think that the only way to effectively police it would be an in-game report feature. You could have in-game statistics record how many materials are traded between characters or how often a character is /follow to another or if someone is using 7 accounts as 'family members' so they can summon themselves anywhere in the world then if someone does report for multi-boxing, when a GM takes a closer look you would have this additional info. It would be quite hard to determine if someone is multi-boxing or if it is a different person on the same network.
By all means, if you know a way to outright prevent multi-boxing while still allowing multiple people on the same network to play concurrently then that would be amazing.
There are a multitude of reasons why multi-boxing is detrimental, but as a bare minimum I'll use this. If you're not going to have pay to convenience features in the in-game store e.g. paying for additional bag space, what is realistically the difference between just paying for a second account and just /follow while you trade materials over.
Just simply stating that multi-boxing will result in a permanent ban will discourage most people from even starting a second account.
As a multi-boxer myself I can confirm that it is pay to win, even without scripts.
His characters can also be killed at any time by any player. Good luck keeping all those characters safe. In that respect the community can police things well enough.
We can't rely on this as easily as you suggest. With the design of the corruption system I find this player created solution very poor. Sure maybe you can't keep them safe all of the time, but with how limiting open world PvP will be the multiboxers will always have the upper hand. I agree with their design philosophy for open world PvP, but it will be exploited to benefit multiboxers.
Trust me when I say a tiny setback on one of my boxes is nothing to sweat about while playing on ten or more other accounts. The amount of useful game time coming out of a multiboxer's accounts collectively can not be stopped by a random person killing an alt and hindering them for two hours of progress (out of possibly many dozens of hours of play time total in one day.)
A side note:
I find it very telling that so many of the self-proclaimed multiboxers, myself included, are speaking out against it from personal experience and gameplay experience. It would be a mistake to pass up the advice of people that are most likely to be doing these things on your game.
Not only that point but the fact that the argument for keeping the current stance is 'sure why not' and the argument against it is an extremely 'come-to-my-TED-talk' level of frustration. I would like to see an argument that multiboxing would be a benefit to the game. What are the positives to allowing it?
Comments
I'm personally not in favor of multi-boxing as it could have a huge impact on the game's economy, freehold slots, etc. There shouldn't exist an automatic system that bans players who share the same IP but you should create a system that can track a user's action and flag players who are potentially multi-boxing for manual review. I don't think multi-boxing should be encouraged in any form and considering that ashes have a subscription on top of a slow leveling progression banning a player should be quite a punishing deterrent for multi-boxers as long as you can locate them. As people have mentioned in the thread it should be really hard if not close to impossible to completely prevent multi-boxers but I think it's important to take a stance against it and punish whenever it's noticed rather than letting it run rampant.
Since combat is an action hybrid it should be quite hard for multi-boxers to use it for combat purposes, but considering the 64 class combinations and that you can have up to 75% tab-target skills I'm sure they will find a way to be effective in combat, even if it's only as support. I'd also advise against having a 'follow' function in-game.
In general, I think multi-boxing has a higher chance of being a potentially bad thing for the game than something good, if you need to play on multiple accounts at the same time to be engaged there might be something wrong with the gameplay. I'm sure the devs are creative enough to think up a good solution to dealing with the potential problems that could occur.
From my personal experience with my friends and I, I have only really saw a tank with pocket healer or random Bots farming things.
But regardless, with banning multi-boxers i dont think it will be a big deal.
For example prevent account sharing by blocking different ip addresses used on the same account.
In my case, I might be in 3 different places round the globe in one week, and might make an attempt to play for a short time from any of them. I work from 2 completely different global locations that couldn`t be further apart. Yet, just me!
To me it all comes down to how "buffers" are gonna work in the game, if they are something like Lineage2's then no, and im sorry for the people who play in family or with roommates, but having a buffer that can potentially increase a characters power by 40% its just gamebreaking for everybody else. On the other hand if buffs are gonna work like in wow (1 per class or something like that) then I wont have any problems with allowing multiple accounts per IP.
As someone suggested earlier, a good way to stop ppl from multiboxing is making gathering more dynamic, like a mini game, otherwise is so easy to leave a character in gathering spots and once in a while click on a "plant".
The more active a character have to be in order to do anything the harder it is to do something on two PCs. Avoid dead times ingame (fishing in BDO, crafting in FFXIV, enchanting in some chronicles of L2)
For Freeholds, yes, u could get more than 1 (pretty impressive farming BTW) but u still wont be able to defend it if ur node loses a castle, so could work only for a little time.
PD: No follow option.
You also have to consider the ease by which a multi-boxer can be identified. Can any checks the game might perform tell the difference between one person boxing and a couple playing the game together?
What I do feel needs to be outlawed in Ashes is bottling, and by that I mean using external programs or in game commands to control a character. I also particular dislike extended multi-boxing of more than two characters. In WoW Classic I came across a guy botting 12 characters. That should be impossible without bot commands.
The question is whether tools utilised in Ashes can reliably spot botting. Any tool has to be perfect, but I have confidence following Steven's answers on spotting gold farmers. It sounds like Intrepid have worked hard to create reliable tools to spot behaviours that are better not in the game.
To summarise, I see no problem with what would be a small number of people running two accounts because I think the benefits do not hugely outweigh the efforts. I do, however, feel that the use of external programs and/or botting should be combated. A character should be played by the player that owns an account, not by a piece of software.
I must also make a distinction between botting and the use of simple commands in game, such as /assist tools, should they exist in Ashes.
Allowing use of multiple PCs (which wouldn't be possible to block anyway) and in the same time disallowing boxes on same PC creates obvious disadvantage for these who have just 1 PC and would want to have extra account for any reason.
Since we cant effectively block multiple PCs use, best solution would be to allow 2 instances of game on same PC.
Multiboxers have the opportunity to play the game, even without macros and scripts, in a way that other players physically can not compete with them. If a multiboxer is playing as few as three accounts at 75% efficiency compared to a single normal player after one twelve-hour gaming session the multiboxer will have achieved twenty-seven hours of progress. One person could not hope to compete with this even if they forego sleep and food.
The design principles behind Ashes of Creation are largely player-driven and competitive. Getting your node to the next tier before another one captures yours as a vassal capping it. Upgrading the node's defensive capabilities if you believe you are going to war, and especially after a war declaration. Cornering the market at all stages of production for a particular good to create a monopoly in your community. Voting for yourself as mayor could also be an issue for obvious reasons. Hoovering up freehold slots and holding them hostage until forcibly taken, just to name a few things. If this was any other game that did not heavily rely on what people are doing in the world multiboxing would not be an issue at all! The implications of multiboxing on the economy and node based system are far greater than anything else.
Multiboxers under your current allowance gain their advantage within a game through down time between actions. If the gameplay is pressing E to watch an animation that wait time is their bread and butter while working on low-risk artisan skills especially. Every second they have to do an action on another account is valuable to them. If the gameplay itself involving questing, crafting, exploration, and so on was active and engaging gameplay the advantage would be minimized significantly. Obviously, we do not know if the only way to participate in PvE artisan skills is press E to wait four seconds. If there is even a little more depth to it that would make it difficult to replicate on five, ten or more accounts at once that would be perfect. It appears that combat and PvP as already achieved this and will naturally not be the traditional wait-to-cast-tab-targeting-frenzy that is easily exploitable via multiboxing.
Having been one of these whales in the past on other MMOs I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge the gameplay experience for people that put themselves through the trouble of multiboxing. If a game developer does not actively deter or at least express repercussions of catching someone multiboxing many players will be put in an awkward position. Through the often competitive player-driven experience you are advertising a lot of players will do it because it is the only way to compete at the absolute highest level. Even if they don't want to or despise it themselves certain players will recognize it is the only way to out-compete another person or group of people. If you can't beat them, you must join them. The experience of grind and burnout and enjoyability of truly interacting with the content will be lost on those people, and I believe for many of them through no fault of their own. They're just trying to play the most efficient way possible and keep up with others also doing so.
I appreciate the current stance on multiboxing and would find it acceptable if it had to stay that way. However, I feel actively endorsing it through the rules is problematic. I understand from a policy perspective it is hard to enforce a total ban on multiboxing, but I genuinely believe it's in the best interest for a game like this to not allow it at all. Banning people who script and macro, and giving warnings to people who you rarely catch doing it the old fashioned 1:1 action route with no manipulation. Telling people repercussions will be handed out for those caught doing it will stop enough of them even if they aren't technically cheating.
Edit: Some grammar.
With that being said I personally think that multiboxing in general takes away from the overall quality of the game for that person but this is a personal opinion. Ultimately a person will "play" a game in whatever way they want and as long as that way doesn't A)Provide advantage over the game vs other people or B)affect other players game play in a negative manner then thats there choice.
Beloc
I have the same issues with multiboxing and I agree with the principle of puting the economy of the game first. Certain resources (freeholds and in-node housing) are hard limited per account, and the reason I suppose is to balance the power of players, so that noone will get the revenue of 2-10 freeholds while others are stuck with 1. Multiboxing would completely bypass this restriction. Even with the prerequisite of one account per computer, many people (including me) possess two computers already, and even two accounts are twice as much revenue from freeholds. So I think multiboxing shouldn't allow people to have access to more real estate, if it can be managed I see no other significant problem with it.
Ideas for solution:
Since I definitely wouldn't want to cause trouble for people playing from the same household, I think the best would be to extend the scope of the already planned system of anti-goldselling. An automated system could signal if there is an unusual amount of one-sided transfer of goods happening between accounts, and if they are happening from the same IP there should be some penalty applied.
As long as there is no macros or third party software allowed then let it be and don't risk false positives. False positives will kill the community more than a multi-boxer.
I have to say I agree with restrictions I guess, mainly because I live in a house with 7 people and I know at least 3 who will play, maybe 4. I will be playing, my wife, my brother and my son may start playing MMOs soon. We may not all play at the same time and if we do it will be separate computers but the same house internet.
I still may not be getting what multiboxing is so then ignore my post.
100% Agree - even if it's hard to track, the stance that it's allowed makes me feel like I need to buy multiple accounts to compete fairly. I've been down this road in WoW with multiboxing 8 accounts and while it becomes very efficient & profitable, it's not really the same game anymore. I think taking a hard stance on scripts/bots is a good start and only allowing 1 client per computer is good as well. Telling people that they can have separate accounts on separate computers playing at the same time is fine - but when I think of multiboxing I think of me playing on the same PC with 8 mages running around blowing everything up with 1 button, not me having 1 account out grinding with another account sitting in the town socializing/trading.
Lineage 2 - if you were not on at peak time and/or did not play in a very large clan or have lots of friends online, then a second account was a fantastic but annoyance to have to play immediately
ESO - I never found a need
BDO - never found a need
NW - although beta, didn`t see a future need
From my view, it comes down to the utility a second account befits and if there are shortfalls/benefits in the game systems/mechanics that lead players to desire to branch out.
In EVE Online when I was actively playing, I had two accounts. This was back when each account was subscribed separately. I didn't have any macros or switches, I manually had to switch between each window and control each ship separately. I mainly used it to mine minerals and ice (one miner, on hauler), as combat I think would be too hectic to control. In this instance, I have no problems with a person controlling multiple accounts at the same time as long as their is no automation between accounts. If they want to spend the time and money to do so, more power to them. Literally.
My recent World of Warcraft experiences with Multiboxing is a person with multiple accounts flying around a zone with 5, 10, 20 different characters farming materials. One account is the primary, the other 19 are on follow. When reaching a gathering node, the primary account and 19 following characters all harvest the node at the exact same time. My problem here is obviously there is no switching of active characters or additional time required to have every one participate in the world. In the time it would take me to harvest 3 of a resource, it would give the other person 60. That .. just isn;t good.
So yeah, I have no issues with multiple accounts controlled by the same person as long as there is no automation involved: every movement and action must be performed independently of each account. Otherwise, I do not want to see multiboxing in this game.
As long as we don't see people going around with multiple characters moving, and doing actions at the same time or within a couple ms of each other because they have somehow managed to mirror the keystrokes from a single input device to multiple characters. I can learn to live with it.
There is still stuff that multiboxers can exploit even with these measures like having fast travel by making a family among their accounts and just teleporting themselves is one such issues. There is also enabling people to avoid socializing in order to complete social activities. Although these are annoying in my opinion they aren't game breaking to my experience.
I see other issues though these are not inherent to multiboxing but instead to multiaccounts. Such as multi freeholds. Granting a single person the ability to double their real state is imo a pretty big deal. There i also bypassing cool downs and mechanics that are account locked (for a reason). But that's for a different topic.
Scenario where it would be useful (happens daily in Lineage 2): you play with own party of friends from beginning, you progress together, gear together, pvp/pve together and join one clan to work inside (called constant party in L2 meta). When one of your friends can't login for some reason you get kinda blocked without possibility to login 1 extra box on your PC, inviting random from shout wont be solution as you aim to progress together in own group.
https://twitch.tv/ridosaw/clip/GlutenFreeCoweringSowFunRun
South East Asia/Oceania server discord: https://discord.gg/J4Epj77
Example of multi-boxing taken to the extreme:
https://www.twitch.tv/ridosaw/clip/GlutenFreeCoweringSowFunRun
Yes, but how many external programs does that guy use?
Could he reliably do that without the use of bot commands?
How many people have the resources/money to do that?
If he can manage 3 characters with no external tools, just him going back and forth between keyboards, then all the power in the world to him. I am sure there must be some loss if efficiency in that scenario.
Man you have never played archeage. I bet u havent play lineage 2 properly as well. On bdo the devs have made the game on such a way that multiboxing is useless since u cant trade.
The issue is a matter of playtime. I said it in my post but I will say it again here as a stand-alone comment because it's so important to clarify the issue even with this take.
"Multiboxers have the opportunity to play the game, even without macros and scripts, in a way that other players physically can not compete with them. If a multiboxer is playing as few as three accounts at 75% efficiency compared to a single normal player after one twelve-hour gaming session the multiboxer will have achieved twenty-seven hours of progress. One person could not hope to compete with this even if they forego sleep and food."
The numbers are made up, but this is really a simple example considering the lengths some people will go to for multiboxing. Even if the actions are perfectly legitimate there is no way to physically compete with a multiboxer, and this game by definition lends itself to competitive gameplay. I'm not just talking about PvP and all that entails but being a fellow EVE player I'm sure you're aware of the implication on the awful arms race multiboxing becomes at the higher ends of gameplay when a dev decides to publically state it's an acceptable way to play the game.
Steven has already said that his vision for resource gathering is that it will be fairly afk. In that case, it doesn't take much effort to control 15+ accounts that simply sit at resource nodes and with 1 click of the node gather for possibly minutes at a time.
He has also said that resource nodes will vary location.
His characters can also be killed at any time by any player. Good luck keeping all those characters safe. In that respect the community can police things well enough.
In any event I feel the number of people wanting to box like this will be rare.
As a multi-boxer myself I know first hand how detrimental it can be, our guild in classic WoW is required to have at least 1 account of the opposite faction purely for greifing our own faction. (I know this isn't a perfect example, but there will be similar situations in Ashes). $15 a month is a very low barrier of entry for a lot of people, the issue isn't so much that 1 person may have 3-4 accounts, it's when entire guilds have 3-4 accounts.
I will admit that I am unsure how you could effectively police multi-boxing if someone is in fact using a different computer, as only allowing 1 game client to be running per IP / Router would be really painful for a lot of the community. Me included as my fiancee and I both play games together in the same room.
I think that the only way to effectively police it would be an in-game report feature. You could have in-game statistics record how many materials are traded between characters or how often a character is /follow to another or if someone is using 7 accounts as 'family members' so they can summon themselves anywhere in the world then if someone does report for multi-boxing, when a GM takes a closer look you would have this additional info. It would be quite hard to determine if someone is multi-boxing or if it is a different person on the same network.
By all means, if you know a way to outright prevent multi-boxing while still allowing multiple people on the same network to play concurrently then that would be amazing.
There are a multitude of reasons why multi-boxing is detrimental, but as a bare minimum I'll use this. If you're not going to have pay to convenience features in the in-game store e.g. paying for additional bag space, what is realistically the difference between just paying for a second account and just /follow while you trade materials over.
Just simply stating that multi-boxing will result in a permanent ban will discourage most people from even starting a second account.
As a multi-boxer myself I can confirm that it is pay to win, even without scripts.
We can't rely on this as easily as you suggest. With the design of the corruption system I find this player created solution very poor. Sure maybe you can't keep them safe all of the time, but with how limiting open world PvP will be the multiboxers will always have the upper hand. I agree with their design philosophy for open world PvP, but it will be exploited to benefit multiboxers.
Trust me when I say a tiny setback on one of my boxes is nothing to sweat about while playing on ten or more other accounts. The amount of useful game time coming out of a multiboxer's accounts collectively can not be stopped by a random person killing an alt and hindering them for two hours of progress (out of possibly many dozens of hours of play time total in one day.)
A side note:
I find it very telling that so many of the self-proclaimed multiboxers, myself included, are speaking out against it from personal experience and gameplay experience. It would be a mistake to pass up the advice of people that are most likely to be doing these things on your game.
Not only that point but the fact that the argument for keeping the current stance is 'sure why not' and the argument against it is an extremely 'come-to-my-TED-talk' level of frustration. I would like to see an argument that multiboxing would be a benefit to the game. What are the positives to allowing it?