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An argument for making multiboxing legal in Ashes of Creation
Telandras
Member
Hear me out. I don't expect the devs to capitulate, but my intention is to discuss multiboxing, what it is, and how it can be done in a way that helps some players enjoy the game without detracting from what others get from it.
Multiboxers are a different breed of gamer, many of them probably neuro-divergent in some way or other, but this notion that they come to the game like a sadistic kid with a magnifying glass and an ant farm needs to go. It's not fair to compare multiboxers to any real-life minority, but there is a degree of unwarranted hate projected at them, and I'd suggest that this sort of rage is what can happen when zealotry doesn't find a religious outlet. (For which, I suppose, I can be thankful?)
Full disclosure: I played WoW from 2010 through 2020, got as high as perhaps US top 50 PvE guilds, and came into multiboxing only around 2018. I was late to the game in collecting, but through my WoW "journey" leveling and economy were some of the most fun I had in the game. A decade before I started playing WoW, I was a mediocre track runner, just didn't have the body for it, but some of my best times were the last season when I said my injured ankle wasn't going to permit more punishment and I managed for high high school team.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have been ten-boxing since 2004, leveling at least ten of everything and perhaps forty Paladins, eighty Druids, forty or more Death Knights and later Demon Hunters. When things like their Time Walking (revamped old dunegons, with gear scaling) took off, I would have jumped on it and smashed through to claim the epic mounts. I would have farmed, leveled, and experimented with ways to push five- and perhaps even ten-man content one to two tiers back (i.e. Bastion of Twilight towards the end of WoW: Cataclysm, can ten Death Knight tanks spec'ed into their party-healing Blood Boil defeat Chimaeron?). I would have managed mats and early-patch crafting / BoEs for a truly great guild like Midwinter. I would have perhaps spent money on WoW tokens to buy a ridiculous Hearthstone deck (that's what my former GM's son did when he found the gold I gave her after I took a hiatus), but I wouldn't have paid for my subs through tokens (this is unethical, because it encourages high school and college kids to spend their time playing, essentially making $2-3 per hour, to fund their habits, which is a terrible waste). I would have collected every mount possible, perhaps even worked on my PvP chops (not multiboxed) to buy off some pros and get myself a season Gladiator title or two. I would have paid various guilds for carries in the interest of donating to good outfits on different servers. When the Legion Artifact Power race went on, I would have leveraged my massive toon farm to funnel rep tokens into a single player, "Maximumcheez" in his own guild "Multibox RepFarm TYBlizz" (yes, that fits within the character limits), then bought a carry for the Argus raid from the guild of the second-highest AP player to assure him that he is the true marvel.
I did not multibox to kill other players or manipulate the economy. I like to farm, but my account was never banned or even received a warning because I would mail GMs whenever I was transferring gold ("this is to my GM, I am doing this to support the guild") or if a situation arose where I could be seen as bullying. I would level professions and hit many markets, so the overall effect was a drop in the bucket, with mats and craftables all getting a little cheaper and gold moving a little faster. I did it because I could log in and experience 90-95% of the current content, collect those last few mounts, without spending most of my time waiting in queues or sitting in old zones waiting for bosses to spawn so I can get one Moonfire off. Raiding had its ups and downs, but farming and collecting were just my thing.
That said, I regard what I did in WoW as more or less ethical, although I would have changed some of my policies if I had it to do again. (I'll also admit to "sniping" single-target world quest spawns with 5x Starfire from time to time, which I should not have if others were also waiting for the NPC.) Now, when I think of Ashes of Creation, I can see the reasoning that the devs have for the multibox policy they've declared: only one client per machine, no key-broadcasting software. This is stronger than the policy that Blizzard eventually settled on (and for a time, even after they put that in place, I was running teams with /follow macros and tabbing between clients). In Ashes, the policy supports:
* Fair competition in node leveling
* Fair competition in the ever-present PvP experience
* A purist sense of the MMO experience
If they would loosen the policy, I would still love to multibox this game, subject even to the following restrictions:
* Increased corruption for accounts that opt into a multi-client feature, otherwise subject to the same circumstances under which corruption is acquired. If I run in and smash some guy with my eight characters, I get corrupted at double or quadruple the rate of a typical account, but if he started it by going ham on me then it's fine.
* Nodes only gain experience for the actions of the player's head account. Players cannot push a node forward at higher rates simply by multiplying themselves into a whole dungeon group.
* Players pay full freight for each of their accounts--there's no reason to expect otherwise, as I think the des have said there will be no play-to-pay token.
* Server-limited legendaries and other scarce items can only drop for the primary account. Rare but otherwise unlimited mats and crafting outcomes will have the same probabilities for sub-accounts.
In the seven years I played WoW without multiboxing, I encountered only a handful of boxers and there were only a couple of times that my experience was to be smashed because they were sadistic. (Although, if I had it to do over, I would have taken ten medium-well geared Fire Mages against that jerk with thirty boosted Frost DKs who was round-robin Death-Gripping players and nuking then with Howling Blast at the Horde beachhead in Tanaan Jungle... every character casts three Living Bombs and then Meteor). If I could multibox AoC, I'm sure I would find my niche.
Multiboxers are a different breed of gamer, many of them probably neuro-divergent in some way or other, but this notion that they come to the game like a sadistic kid with a magnifying glass and an ant farm needs to go. It's not fair to compare multiboxers to any real-life minority, but there is a degree of unwarranted hate projected at them, and I'd suggest that this sort of rage is what can happen when zealotry doesn't find a religious outlet. (For which, I suppose, I can be thankful?)
Full disclosure: I played WoW from 2010 through 2020, got as high as perhaps US top 50 PvE guilds, and came into multiboxing only around 2018. I was late to the game in collecting, but through my WoW "journey" leveling and economy were some of the most fun I had in the game. A decade before I started playing WoW, I was a mediocre track runner, just didn't have the body for it, but some of my best times were the last season when I said my injured ankle wasn't going to permit more punishment and I managed for high high school team.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have been ten-boxing since 2004, leveling at least ten of everything and perhaps forty Paladins, eighty Druids, forty or more Death Knights and later Demon Hunters. When things like their Time Walking (revamped old dunegons, with gear scaling) took off, I would have jumped on it and smashed through to claim the epic mounts. I would have farmed, leveled, and experimented with ways to push five- and perhaps even ten-man content one to two tiers back (i.e. Bastion of Twilight towards the end of WoW: Cataclysm, can ten Death Knight tanks spec'ed into their party-healing Blood Boil defeat Chimaeron?). I would have managed mats and early-patch crafting / BoEs for a truly great guild like Midwinter. I would have perhaps spent money on WoW tokens to buy a ridiculous Hearthstone deck (that's what my former GM's son did when he found the gold I gave her after I took a hiatus), but I wouldn't have paid for my subs through tokens (this is unethical, because it encourages high school and college kids to spend their time playing, essentially making $2-3 per hour, to fund their habits, which is a terrible waste). I would have collected every mount possible, perhaps even worked on my PvP chops (not multiboxed) to buy off some pros and get myself a season Gladiator title or two. I would have paid various guilds for carries in the interest of donating to good outfits on different servers. When the Legion Artifact Power race went on, I would have leveraged my massive toon farm to funnel rep tokens into a single player, "Maximumcheez" in his own guild "Multibox RepFarm TYBlizz" (yes, that fits within the character limits), then bought a carry for the Argus raid from the guild of the second-highest AP player to assure him that he is the true marvel.
I did not multibox to kill other players or manipulate the economy. I like to farm, but my account was never banned or even received a warning because I would mail GMs whenever I was transferring gold ("this is to my GM, I am doing this to support the guild") or if a situation arose where I could be seen as bullying. I would level professions and hit many markets, so the overall effect was a drop in the bucket, with mats and craftables all getting a little cheaper and gold moving a little faster. I did it because I could log in and experience 90-95% of the current content, collect those last few mounts, without spending most of my time waiting in queues or sitting in old zones waiting for bosses to spawn so I can get one Moonfire off. Raiding had its ups and downs, but farming and collecting were just my thing.
That said, I regard what I did in WoW as more or less ethical, although I would have changed some of my policies if I had it to do again. (I'll also admit to "sniping" single-target world quest spawns with 5x Starfire from time to time, which I should not have if others were also waiting for the NPC.) Now, when I think of Ashes of Creation, I can see the reasoning that the devs have for the multibox policy they've declared: only one client per machine, no key-broadcasting software. This is stronger than the policy that Blizzard eventually settled on (and for a time, even after they put that in place, I was running teams with /follow macros and tabbing between clients). In Ashes, the policy supports:
* Fair competition in node leveling
* Fair competition in the ever-present PvP experience
* A purist sense of the MMO experience
If they would loosen the policy, I would still love to multibox this game, subject even to the following restrictions:
* Increased corruption for accounts that opt into a multi-client feature, otherwise subject to the same circumstances under which corruption is acquired. If I run in and smash some guy with my eight characters, I get corrupted at double or quadruple the rate of a typical account, but if he started it by going ham on me then it's fine.
* Nodes only gain experience for the actions of the player's head account. Players cannot push a node forward at higher rates simply by multiplying themselves into a whole dungeon group.
* Players pay full freight for each of their accounts--there's no reason to expect otherwise, as I think the des have said there will be no play-to-pay token.
* Server-limited legendaries and other scarce items can only drop for the primary account. Rare but otherwise unlimited mats and crafting outcomes will have the same probabilities for sub-accounts.
In the seven years I played WoW without multiboxing, I encountered only a handful of boxers and there were only a couple of times that my experience was to be smashed because they were sadistic. (Although, if I had it to do over, I would have taken ten medium-well geared Fire Mages against that jerk with thirty boosted Frost DKs who was round-robin Death-Gripping players and nuking then with Howling Blast at the Horde beachhead in Tanaan Jungle... every character casts three Living Bombs and then Meteor). If I could multibox AoC, I'm sure I would find my niche.
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Comments
I'd prefer if Ashes was higher on decisions and challenge at least to the point where multi-boxing didn't really matter very much, but I know that's difficult to design in totality.
If it turns out to be the sort of game where multi-boxing has strong benefits, then I'd kinda think the only reason to disallow it is to keep up a certain illusion.
If you find it fun, OP, and expect it to work for you, either as a challenge or as a means of finding additional enjoyment in a relatively slow/simple game, then there's probably other avenues you can use. You'd already be paying $1800 a year for the ten Dreadnoughts or whatever, right? Just throw more money at the problem some other way too. There are interesting options out there.
When I commit to a game, I don't play any others--gaming means one app at a time. It looks like the most multibox bang-for-the-buck in this would be eight (eight-man dungeons), so perhaps $1440 per year. I'm paying nearly twice that in monthly rent, 2/3 of that in auto insurance. Not bad for a game that I might spend even one in ten waking hours on.
If you get other responses in the thread, I ask that you bear one thing in mind relative to the mindsets of anyone who posts and doesn't mention WoW themselves.
I read that line and just had the response of 'oh right, because this is what MMOs are like, for some people'.
This isn't meant to be negative toward you or what you enjoy at all, and in fact I hope that Ashes has something similar for you to enjoy, exactly as you describe it. A 'trophy' for your effort that you can look at, and have memories of achieving.
It's just that for some people, that's basically not an experience that they've literally ever had or cared about having, so their responses may be colored by that.
Mostly because while you might be all good and proper as a multiboxer - it would take even just a single bad player to outweigh 10 people like you. And there'd be waaaay more than one player if software macrosing was allowed.
And if you'd be ok to multibox w/o any software macroes, I'm curious how do you expect to fight back against pvp attackers, cause even in L2, which was click-to-move and had assist macroes (in-game ones, not 3rd party software) - fighting against even just a few people was really difficult. Ashes will have a much more complex combat system and would depend on party synergies way more.
I am also kiiinda against it.
Why ?
Because it is not " playing the Game ", when someone does that. It is using Programs and being a small One-Man Army, right ?
What aside from for things like Cheating, Exploiting, Farming to Grind - scam and cheat in the "Economy" by using this and so on - for what aside these things would Multiboxing even be good for ?
I can see it coming already from a Mile away. People with +9 Computers, Accounts and so on -> own AAALL THE FREEHOLDS (LOL!!) and the Normalos can "look around where they stay" - a.k.a. look dumb into Space and not being able to do anything about it.
Ban multiboxers, hackers, scripters, and even the thread OP for even thinking about it.
The second you multi-box, you've taken away the opportunity for someone else to log into the server and enjoy the game at all. It automatically negatively impacts other players.
I just don't find that ethical no matter how you slice it.
The second you multibox... as I was saying, multibox hatred is the sort of thing akin to other kinds of zealotry. Would you really get all in a bunch if you heard that there was a multiboxer on your server? I recall the senator's character in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Lord have mercy on our souls...
Every time I post even a discussion about multiboxing, people come after me like this. As I said above, the haters are zealous, and it shares a common thread with IRL hate in this notion that if there is even one of these people present, everything is degraded as if by some psychic or spiritual force. It's a game. I'm telling you how I would hypothetically enjoy playing it, and if the rules are so much against multiboxing then I can't enjoy it in that way. But I definitely would not enjoy playing with people who could be so bothered by someone's personal preferences that they would feel the person needs to be banned just for having them.
I do like being a small one-man army for dungeon runs, and as far as farming goes, per account the simplest farming is generally to have one toon at a time in different spots, especially if loot / flowers / ore does not multiply for each character credited with the kill or harvesting (which didn't start in WoW until patch 7.0 in 2016). Agreed, a few bad apples can spoil the barrel, but I don't see how a handful of multiboxers, especially playing according to a set of reasonable rules set in place by the game software itself, would detract from the typical player's experience.
Freeholds have been mentioned as a possible exploit for multiboxers. True, it is easier to make gold / farm as a multiboxer, but this is in absolute terms. For a multiboxer with eight toons to farm 8x as much as the typical player would take more than 8x as long, except in terms of perhaps some rare mats that require groups to achieve. Same goes for quest completions. (The advantage to multiboxing did notch up in WoW Patch 5.0, when most mounts, pets, and achievements became shared across all characters and sub-accounts--then multiboxers could just buy one dinosaur mount with auction house turtle dudes or whatever and have it for all their accounts.) I could see a multiboxer with several separate accounts managing two or perhaps three freeholds on different servers, but I think that for me (and I am a farmer with few equals) I would not go for more than two and use them just to house my "elite" teams. Other characters would probably get the typical (and unlimited) player housing.
But, see above: a multiboxer going after rare mats would still be hard pressed to farm current content with the proficiency of eight individual players collaborating and controlling geared toons with specialized roles. The current content is going to be where the money is, and while multiboxers would be able to farm more recent content than a soloist, the soloist will not be all that far behind, tbh. As a multiboxer I was able to farm a special mount from a WoW patch 7.1 raid dungeon in patch 8.1, but by 8.3 other well geared raiders were soloing the content by themselves to farm the same mount.
It's the ultra-rare mounts and in-game collectibles that I go for, which multiboxing WoW was uniquely well suited for. Some may take offense that I would ever do it, but I think they'd be pretty hard pressed to come up with a logical argument why they enjoy the game less because someone else has taken that route to grinding collectibles or managing a personal economy.
I can offer one last example from WoW. In Patch 5.0-5.2, four ultra-rare (1/2000 drop chance) mounts were added. I managed to get two relatively fast, the third took perhaps 4000 attempts, and when I finally got the last, after raising more than 150 characters to max level for more rolls against it, I got a nasty tell from a nearby player who was also farming the old content for the blue-colored lightning Cloud Serpent (WoW players will know the one, Nalak's mount from the Isle of Thunder). I sent a tell back, "hey, this was 7000 attempts." He was impressed by that, and we had a pretty good conversation. It really is just how I like to play the game.
Aren't we all sinners?
I wanted to check what it says about this topic.
Multiple accounts I know are allowed as long as the owner makes the effort to level each.
And there was a question recently if having a character acting like a guild bank, just moving a little bit to cancel the auto akf timer is ok. I cannot find the question.
Such bots can do whatever a player does and are hard to detect if a player is ready and takes control on it fast. Can be banks, spies observing an area, family teleportation points ... A player with 3 accounts can conveniently travel from continent to continent with a main account.
Any such features feel like pay to win or pay for convenience which upsets those who play to win.
Also opens the gate for bots who just harvest resources.
ITs not allowed to be running multiple games on the same computer which this guy is wanting to do.
Then better IS will not allow Geforce Now either
And should track game accounts from bank accounts with same name.
Yes, I have not fully read the wall of text first.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Multi-boxing
Third party tools are not allowed. They cant go as extreme as banning an IP because people do play in the same house. Multi-boxing is only viable with third party tools. Using a tool that lets you click on all your computers at the same time would be considered a 3rd party tool. So what you are saying is "allowed" is a dude playing musical chairs with multiple computers.
At no point do I want one dude using 8 toons in synchronisation because I've seen whole raids get wiped by one dude who multiboxes. Therefore, multiboxing is allowed from my perspective but cheating is another matter entirely.
I think this is meant to be the April 1st thread.
Gamers can multibox Ashes... by using multiple accounts.
Are you doing a April 1st meme or did you just not read the OP?
No macros? Well, that makes the game less enjoyable even as a single player.
I could think about getting two small form-factor machines as my next "computer" but that is, indeed, quite a lot of effort in itself.
It also sounds like there's are no flight points, every bit of movement will require the player actively managing the character. To make a journey on a fast ground mount from one end of a WoW continent to the other, especially in the first installment where the two continents were huge, would be about thirty minutes if you knew what you were doing. Steven might say "yes, but that's all part of the risk-reward system." I think that's just building in a degree of effort due to a high-level miscalculation. Content will get old, there will need to be a constant stream of new adventure, and for the portion of the community that does like old content (which is substntial in itself, and everyone likes a little old content from time to time) the devs will need to do things to make it more easily accessible.
In general, it seems like these devs are very devoted to the purist MMO experience, which is great in a sense, but they are not going to get enough people on the same page to pay subscriptions. To spend seven years and tens of millions of dollars with a company of dozens of employees to bring a niche game to the market is not a sound business proposal, and if the whole thing goes bust that will impact the experience of the hard-core players, too. If Steven is some Saudi prince or otherwise has pockets even deeper than a few tens of millions, he may be able to bequeath his dream of an ideal MMO to the world. Otherwise, I think that a little compromise to make a bigger tent is in order.
8.5/10 troll