An argument for making multiboxing legal in Ashes of Creation

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.

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Comments

Sathrago

Song_Warden wrote: »

Yeah so multiboxing won. You could never use one computer anyway due to no macro usage allowed. However, you can have multi accounts operational at the same time without punishment if you have spare devices.

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.

Songcaller

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

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

Otr

Mag7spy wrote: »

This is a troll btw.

I think this is meant to be the April 1st thread.

Dygz

It's OK if it is.
Gamers can multibox Ashes... by using multiple accounts.

Tahiti02

Absolutely not, has no purpose in MMOs.

Mag7spy

Song_Warden wrote: »

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

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

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

Telandras

Well, @Otr @Mag7spy , thanks for pointing out the date, but this was not intended as a troll.

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.

hleV

Next post: An argument for making cheats legal in Ashes of Creation. "hEaR mE oUt" no I won't lmao.

Nerror

Big no thanks to multi-boxing in the normal sense of the word, with macros and shared key clicks and such. There is no real upside to it for anyone else.

Mag7spy

This guy is making a argument it shouldn't be aa niche game for buisness, and the game should be easier....You can't make this up this has to be a April fools joke. Hell he even brought up single player while him wanting to play a mmorpg as a single player game lol.
8.5/10 troll

mcstackerson

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

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

koltovince

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

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

Mag7spy

You will be right at home on lost ark

Songcaller

Mag7spy wrote: »

Song_Warden wrote: »

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

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

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

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

Telandras

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sathrago

Telandras wrote: »

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

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

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

Aszkalon

Xeeg wrote: »

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

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

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

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

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

I personally say it again,

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

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

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

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

Telandras

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

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

Arya_Yeshe

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

Ridiel

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

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

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