I DO NOT want to see a chain of characters, played by one person, running around in Pantheon... Everyone should only be able to play one character and if you do not like socializing or making friends to accomplish your goals, go play another game.
Now, to the security experts out there, how can this be prevented when this game goes live?
It is basically impossible to enforce completely.
And to be perfectly honest I plan to dual box again (Tank / healer combo) if it's possible. No I won't be using any 3rd party software, just some good, old fashioned, two computer, two account, boxing :D
Its definitely not impossible. Virtual machines and vpn/proxy can all be detected.
They've already said the game will be hard for people trying to efficiently control multiple characters. When a play is playing many characters, it will most likely mean automation which should be bannable as well as detectable by anti-hack software.
Well I agree it has to be GMs that can observe game play and would be in place to enforce this activity, invisible to all players. This would prevent abuse of the boxing feature. I think these are mandatory positions for VR to have in place to ensure better game play.
I would imagine this would be no big deal since they will most likely have GM influenced events all the time all over the game. This is a part I am really looking forward to, having to be online and involved to get that unique experience!
I am okay with boxing or pocket characters, however, I think game play should make this very difficult to manage for most areas of the game. Lots of diversity or wandering mobs to keep even individual players on their toes. So boxing in this environment would be tough.
Botting is the main problem to prevent yes...
I've always been 100% against boxing in any form, especially back in EQ1. It was essentially cheating. Even if only two boxing, you are essentially doubling your personal power over other players. Adding in more boxes was exponentially worse. It's why I left both top raiding guilds on Ragefire and then Lockjaw and stopped playing on the latest EQ1 progression servers completely. Everything was made overly trivial by rampant boxing.
For a start don't put in a /follow command. Next make sure there is no way to automate a character through 3rd party macros and hacks. Also make the actual play of a character somewhat involved. Nothing as micro-managing as for example manually twisting 4 bard songs, but the player needing to be aware of on screen cues, sounds and so on that they react to with appropriate movements, spells and so on to achieve a good outcome. A character that just button mashes irrespective of what's occuring on the screen will not be taking advantage of the cues and be far less effective (or not at all).
The point is to make the actions of a character meaningful in context of what is happening. Boxing is far less likely to be efficient if every character has to be managed closely (without over burdening the player) to be properly effective. One could possibly box 2 characters with middling efficiency, but more should become much, much harder.
Sorry to do it again, but /agree Furor.
I don't use 3rd party software to automate anything, and for the most part, I box to make raising alts easier, but if I want to give VR more money to play more accounts so I can do whatever boxing does for me, I don't think they should have a rule against more revenue. I would always choose a real group over boxed toons, but sometimes that isn't a choice.
Again, I use it to have access to alts easier. And as member of plenty of raid guilds in plenty of games, sometimes the raid has all the DPS it needs, but no healers, or plenty of heals and no deepz, and having an alt stable that allows you to fill gaps effectively helps your guild/friends succeed. Plus, it once again is more revenue for VR.
Botting? Fine, ban it. But one person paying for and playing two accounts manually is not much different in the game from two people playing individual accounts, minus clearing up a few interdependency things like buffs/ports that are a minor cash market. Beyond me not needing to beg/WTB for that kind of stuff, it's two accounts playing P:RotF. In a group of others, I'd always tell them I bot, see if they are OK with it, and always drop a boxed toon for a real player. Most boxers work the exact same way.
Azraell said:Dual boxing is fine. Its not fine when one instance of the game is running in the backround doing attacks and doing stuff on its own... While ur tabbed on your main doing something else.
The scenario you're talking about is botting. And yeah, that should be banned. I've never actually botted because it is against just about every EULA in existence, even if mostly unenforced. But I've boxed in EVE, AO and EQ1, since forever. It's the easy way to have bench players for your guild and to speed up the hunt for a buff. Hell, in Anarchy Online, the 2nd account with the buffbots (MP, doc, fixer) is so common it's ubiquitous.
I'm against boxing and botting. Boxing due to the fact that one person can effectively dominate content meant for a group of people. Even if two different people can do the same thing, it's still twice as many people benefiting from the content. However I think they would have to get rid of the /target /assist/ /follow commands to really help battle the ease of boxing with programs like isboxer. It makes it sooo easy to box 2-100 chars as long as your computer can handle it.
Though with getting rid of those commands other issues would present themselves. Which obviously takes away from designing the game, however I hope they can battle it a little bit. Just because I can afford 10 accounts doesn't mean that I should be able to ruin the game for tons of other people just like on the EQ progression servers. It will happen if you let it.
Most boxers don't even get to boxing until the game itself has population issues or they are raising their 10th+ alt. Those that do it earlier are making bench players for a guild roster. Personally, my boxing career has always been centered around lack of population. In a robust, thriving community, boxing is largely unnecessary and in EQ1 through maybe PoP, it wasn't very common. Then WoW came along and began decimating EQ1's population, and boxing started becoming more common. AO was/is the same way. Boxing alleviates the shortfall in population.
I always prefer to single box and play with others. Less headaches, less trouble, cheaper. But MMO populations are a funny thing and sometimes they disappear overnight.
I am going to go ahead and close this thread guys, we have multiple threads already existing on the topic of Boxing (even two after the 2015 archive dump) as it has been debated to death and we have made our stance clear on the subject.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1822/multi-boxing
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1952/dual-boxing-the-touchy-subject
Please use the search function before creating a new post, as you will most likely find that someone has already created a thread on the subject and we want to keep all discussions consolidated, so the information is easy to find and read for all of our new and old members alike.
Our stance:
Boxing will be allowed, but the way our characters and abilities are set up it will make it very hard. We will not tolerate cheats, gold farmers or botting programs but having multiple accounts to dual box is perfectly fine.
On a side note, isboxer isn't illegal or botting software, it is not a bannable offence in EQ, EQ2, VG, WoW etc. it is keystroke mimicking software that requires a person to be sitting at their computer and playing, this isn't something we support, I just wanted to clear that up. There is a botting add-on for isboxer that is illegal and will get you banned but the isboxer software itself will not.