I recently started playing some Everquest again on the new TLP server called Coirnav. Supposedly that is a "one box" server where you are only allowed to play one account per PC. Apparently noone really cares about that and I consistently saw trains of 5 characters on auto-follow after another character. All of them played by the same guy.
Is this something we will see in Pantheon?
Personally I am extremely opposed to multi-boxing. Not because I can't do it, or can't afford to do it, but because multi-boxing creates a wide array of issues in an MMO. Especially a group-based MMO.
Why would I be opposed to multi-boxing?
It reduces the amount of people actually grouping together. This happens in two ways.
1) The person multi-boxing doesn't need a group.
2) Someone with 'boxed' characters are taking up a spot in a group that could otherwise have been filled by an actual player.
When there are less people grouping together it starts a downwards spiral where more people then get frustrated from being LFG so much, so they become encouraged to make their own multi-box setup so their preferred character always has a group or the very least an option to keep getting experience from "soloing" using boxed alts to help them.
Another reason I am opposed to multi-boxing is because it also undermines any in-game economy in the form of items being sold. A solid example of this is how people would use multi-boxing to easily camp an area for an attractive item, examples in early Everquest (and on the TLP servers) is items such as the Golden Efreeti Boots, Fungal Covered Tunic (fungi tunic) and so on. This also reduces the value of such items which in turn makes it much less attractive to go on a dungeon crawl to get those items. This is especially true in the lower and mid-level dungeons where higher levels set up camp and stay there all day on their boxed-alts, only checking once every few minutes to see if the named is up, while doing something different (or camping other nameds with other boxed alts somewhere else).
Another method is to camp multiple areas at the same time using multi-boxing by having a couple characters set up at each different camp. One example of this I saw was in Najena where the same guy was literally camping 5 nameds at the same time (doable because his characters were all way higher level than the nameds). This effectively snuffs out any opportunity or motivation for actual groups who want to do a dungeon crawl for experience and a shot at some loot to actually do so.
Overall the multi-boxing is detrimental to both dungeon crawls for appropriate levels, with flooding the markets with valuable or attractive items and for the idea of actual players grouping together.
Now, if there was only ONE person who did this then you could easily argue "What's the harm in that? They might not have enough time to find or organize a group." And this would be true in the case of just ONE person.
But the simple fact is that when multi-boxing is possible then A LOT of people are going to be (ab?)-using that method. This is evident and proven in Everquest over many, many years and re-proven again on the TLP servers. Some might say "But Everquest is Free to Play so anyone can make multiple accounts and do this for free", but that is a partial truth. To play on the TLP servers, at least the newest ones, it does require a subscription. So despite subscription requirements people WILL be multi-boxing if able to do so.
This is a pretty large concern for me because I don't want to be stuck LFG cause half the people are just "multibox soloing", or do a dungeon crawl with others only to find some multi-box setup is camping every named in a dungeon, or end up selling any loot you find for scraps because the market is already flooded with those items.
So what is being done, if anything, to prevent this in Pantheon?
Will there still be an auto-follow mode?
Will the game do a check to see if other instances is running to prevent more than one game client to run at a time (or some other measure, I'm not a developer so no idea what can be done, to prevent multiple game clients from running at same time)?
Will there be easy tools for reporting multi-boxing in the game? And will such things be followed up and addressed?
Or will it, like in Everquest, just be an official statement that multiboxing is not allowed ("One box servers") but noone really cares about it, least of all Daybreak games (running EQ now) since they make extra cash from people having extra accounts and multi-boxing?
10.4 Will multi-boxing be allowed in Pantheon?
Our reaction to multi-boxing is to try something first before we even entertain the idea of artificially restricting it. We want to make combat, especially mid and higher level combat, so tactically intense, with so much going on, so much to do, so much to counter, so many companions to keep alive and the timing of many abilities crucial, that multi-boxing is extremely difficult if not impossible and likely far inferior to having an actual real person in your group.
Also, True Box just means you need a machine for each account, so those guys you see on Coirnav aren't necessarily breaking the rules. They're just using a bunch of laptops.
Shucklighter said:10.4 Will multi-boxing be allowed in Pantheon?
Our reaction to multi-boxing is to try something first before we even entertain the idea of artificially restricting it. We want to make combat, especially mid and higher level combat, so tactically intense, with so much going on, so much to do, so much to counter, so many companions to keep alive and the timing of many abilities crucial, that multi-boxing is extremely difficult if not impossible and likely far inferior to having an actual real person in your group.
Also, True Box just means you need a machine for each account, so those guys you see on Coirnav aren't necessarily breaking the rules. They're just using a bunch of laptops.
Well, I hope it will be engaging enough that multi-boxing will be impossible.
Also, those guys on Coirnav, whether they are breaking the rules or not they are contributing to a diminished gaming experience for everyone but themselves as a result of it.
Multiboxing ONLY benefits the one person doing it and is completely detrimental to every other aspect of the game and for other players.
The excessive use of multi-boxing is one of the primary reasons why I abandoned the TLP server shortly after trying it out. Every group comes with "12 rogue LFG, have 50 cleric oog" (oog = out of group, basically as a buffer).
I *really* hope this will not be something that happens in Pantheon cause it will just ruin the game for me right out of the gate.
I would like to see VR set a limit on the number of Mac addresses that are registered to a specific account and limit one account per Mac address without a CSR ticket. This will have a two fold benefit.
First it will prevent multi boxing in the form of group leeching. I agree that the game will likely be too challenging to effectively multi box but that does not prevent someone from making a group with their “guild member” then inviting others when infact that guild member is basically going to be afk for the play time. Other players cannot easily tell when someone is a leech until after the fact and this will help protect against it.
Secondly if you lock an account to a specific mac address or a few mac addresses it will prevent a lot of account hacking as well as make it much easier to track the culprit of a hacking. The main reason I would have it be more than one Mac address on the same account is due to families sharing both computers and accounts for financial reasons. If a PC blows up and a new mac address is required a CSR ticket will need to be created to clear the old mac address and register a new one.
I mean, TLP is a different animal. It takes like a week to get to Level 50 on Coirnav. I'm hoping the absolute fastest players will need over a month to get to Level 50 in PRF (the longer, the better in my opinion). Then, if you want to do a tradeskill you're doubling that leveling time, essentially. So, if the game is too punishing to box characters while leveling (as they intend it to be) and the time required to level a character is truly substantial, you'll see a lot less of those LFGs with max level characters out of group. That's a product of TLP. It's just so quick and easy to level that it doesn't make sense -not- to have max level alts on separate accounts. You don't have a ton to do once you hit 50, so why not level alts? You also have toxic krono to pay for all of those accounts on TLP. I don't think it will be much of an issue in PRF.
@Trasak How is it difficult to tell when someone is leeching? Pretty clear, generally. If you see that happening, you replace that character, or you find another group. I definitely don't see VR forcing you to put in a ticket in order to have more than one account in your household.
Shucklighter said:@Trasak How is it difficult to tell when someone is leeching? Pretty clear, generally. If you see that happening, you replace that character, or you find another group. I definitely don't see VR forcing you to put in a ticket in order to have more than one account in your household.
It is difficult to tell that someone is going to be a leech while siting in the nearby city waiting for the group to fill. Finding out someone is a boxed leech only after spending 20-30 minutes finding a group and traveling to the target location is very frustrating. You are left with the choice to either leave the group and start over the 30 minute wait or just let the leech leech until its time for you to logout, your choice is directly dependant on your available play time.
As far as the tickets go I guess you could change it to be a mac address can only have one account connected to the servers at once but multiple mac addresses can be used for the same acount. That way 3 siblings and a parent could share 3 different computers on 4 different acounts but one would not be logged in at any given time, assuming the 3 computers are the registered mac addresses for all 4 accounts.
Ghroznak said:I recently started playing some Everquest again on the new TLP server called Coirnav. Supposedly that is a "one box" server where you are only allowed to play one account per PC. Apparently noone really cares about that and I consistently saw trains of 5 characters on auto-follow after another character. All of them played by the same guy.
Is this something we will see in Pantheon?
Personally I am extremely opposed to multi-boxing. Not because I can't do it, or can't afford to do it, but because multi-boxing creates a wide array of issues in an MMO. Especially a group-based MMO.
Why would I be opposed to multi-boxing?
It reduces the amount of people actually grouping together. This happens in two ways.
1) The person multi-boxing doesn't need a group.
2) Someone with 'boxed' characters are taking up a spot in a group that could otherwise have been filled by an actual player.
When there are less people grouping together it starts a downwards spiral where more people then get frustrated from being LFG so much, so they become encouraged to make their own multi-box setup so their preferred character always has a group or the very least an option to keep getting experience from "soloing" using boxed alts to help them.
Another reason I am opposed to multi-boxing is because it also undermines any in-game economy in the form of items being sold. A solid example of this is how people would use multi-boxing to easily camp an area for an attractive item, examples in early Everquest (and on the TLP servers) is items such as the Golden Efreeti Boots, Fungal Covered Tunic (fungi tunic) and so on. This also reduces the value of such items which in turn makes it much less attractive to go on a dungeon crawl to get those items. This is especially true in the lower and mid-level dungeons where higher levels set up camp and stay there all day on their boxed-alts, only checking once every few minutes to see if the named is up, while doing something different (or camping other nameds with other boxed alts somewhere else).
Another method is to camp multiple areas at the same time using multi-boxing by having a couple characters set up at each different camp. One example of this I saw was in Najena where the same guy was literally camping 5 nameds at the same time (doable because his characters were all way higher level than the nameds). This effectively snuffs out any opportunity or motivation for actual groups who want to do a dungeon crawl for experience and a shot at some loot to actually do so.
Overall the multi-boxing is detrimental to both dungeon crawls for appropriate levels, with flooding the markets with valuable or attractive items and for the idea of actual players grouping together.
Now, if there was only ONE person who did this then you could easily argue "What's the harm in that? They might not have enough time to find or organize a group." And this would be true in the case of just ONE person.
But the simple fact is that when multi-boxing is possible then A LOT of people are going to be (ab?)-using that method. This is evident and proven in Everquest over many, many years and re-proven again on the TLP servers. Some might say "But Everquest is Free to Play so anyone can make multiple accounts and do this for free", but that is a partial truth. To play on the TLP servers, at least the newest ones, it does require a subscription. So despite subscription requirements people WILL be multi-boxing if able to do so.
This is a pretty large concern for me because I don't want to be stuck LFG cause half the people are just "multibox soloing", or do a dungeon crawl with others only to find some multi-box setup is camping every named in a dungeon, or end up selling any loot you find for scraps because the market is already flooded with those items.
So what is being done, if anything, to prevent this in Pantheon?
Will there still be an auto-follow mode?
Will the game do a check to see if other instances is running to prevent more than one game client to run at a time (or some other measure, I'm not a developer so no idea what can be done, to prevent multiple game clients from running at same time)?
Will there be easy tools for reporting multi-boxing in the game? And will such things be followed up and addressed?
Or will it, like in Everquest, just be an official statement that multiboxing is not allowed ("One box servers") but noone really cares about it, least of all Daybreak games (running EQ now) since they make extra cash from people having extra accounts and multi-boxing?
You can literally buy $200 laptop off ebay to run EQ. The people boxing use 6 computers, its not hard. If Pantheon can also run on integerated graphics with it all set on low then having code to prevent single PC from running multiple versions of the game wont matter. You can;t ban IPs because a family can be playing from home. I woun;t compare a TLP server where everyone is trying to race to get gear to lock it down for selling Krono and gold for irl money over Pantheon.
@Trasak A character doesn’t need to be boxed to be a leech, and there are all kinds of other bads that can end up in your group. That’s the beauty of a game where reputation matters. When you have the misfortune of meeting those characters, you make a note not to group with them again. If they don’t shape up, they eventually find that they can’t get groups and they have a lot of difficulty progressing in the game.
There are a ton of people who play with their spouses and kids. I can’t see restrictions like this making it into PRF.
EDIT: Added @Trasak for clarity.
Zeem said:
You can literally buy $200 laptop off ebay to run EQ. The people boxing use 6 computers, its not hard. If Pantheon can also run on integerated graphics with it all set on low then having code to prevent single PC from running multiple versions of the game wont matter. You can;t ban IPs because a family can be playing from home. I woun;t compare a TLP server where everyone is trying to race to get gear to lock it down for selling Krono and gold for irl money over Pantheon.
Mac addresses are the specific machine identifiers that are tied to the network card which is in general integrated into the motherboard. The IP for the same families router could be used multiple times but the same network card could only be used once.
*edit* Ignore that post Zeem, just realized you were talking about GameBreak not banning IPs on the TLP due to multiple connections not refering to my idea for Pantheon
So dramatic... like if you peripherally see a boxed group minding its own business kiling things YOUR GAME HAS BEEN IRREPERABLY BROKEN!!! Jesus.
You'll survive other people boxing for their own goals. Especially if the game is popular/populous enough to be a thing, not having enough "real players" or "real group spots" won't be an issue. Yeah, sometimes there are the uberleetb0xers that use keyboard programs and devices to make all of their super twinked magicians blow things up instantly, and sometimes they come and take your ****, and sometimes you get upset after trying to beat them for a few rounds with your pulse at 140 and ultimately concede and leave... Which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing as long as it is sporadic. Much like your 140 pulse as you die at the bottom of a dungeon and lose your **** because you can't get back to retrieve it. Sporadic pulse of 140 is probably what brings you back to play again.
But usually boxers are just doing their own thing. No one is breaking your whole **** just by running his or her own group. My monk/druid/enchanter box sitting in a tunnel pulling mobs isn't the end of your game.
Chill pill offered. But also, **** you uberleet boxers. DIAF.
But also also, MAC addresses are readily spoofable by simply clicking apply.
See these threads:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1822/multi-boxing
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2315/no-boxing-allowed
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2634/multi-boxing
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6151/boxing-automated-game-play
You'll notice these threads have been closed because they almost always get overly opinionated, as this one pretty much already has. Meanwhile, VR has already made their stance clear in the FAQ.
You may also want to watch this clip: 00:52:39 - Dual-boxing & macros
Bazgrim said:See these threads:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1822/multi-boxing
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2315/no-boxing-allowed
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2634/multi-boxing
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6151/boxing-automated-game-play
You'll notice these threads have been closed because they almost always get overly opinionated, as this one pretty much already has. Meanwhile, VR has already made their stance clear in the FAQ.
You may also want to watch this clip: 00:52:39 - Dual-boxing & macros
Thanks Baz :)