Again. Multiboxing in AO. ttl7 / ttl5 pvp.

[sultryvoltron]

I agree. But looking at AO and not FC for a moment: If FC looks at AO and says: we need this game to make us $82000 every year to break even. Then it starts to matter.

If you've only got 500 active accounts you're only grossing $50k, add the multiboxes to that and you've got 750 active accounts, which is $75k.

At this point, those boxes do actually make a difference.

You know that 20 multiboxers is only 120 accounts right? So really its only 14k additional per your math.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

You know that 20 multiboxers is only 120 accounts right? So really its only 14k additional per your math.

Facepalm on math, but the point still stands.

Although, notably, I'd be willing to bet MB's are more likely to be buying grace off GMI to fund existence than paying subs, and that means overall their value is increased.

Grace, in terms of game time/dollar paid is a lot higher value than a 12 month sub, and as long as there are grace to buy on GMI it means someone forked out the cash to purchase it.

So, broadly speaking, I'm willing to bet MB do more for revenue than simply 12 month recurring subs (which is what I do because it's the cheapest/least effort), than the average player.

[Cratertina]

Meh, subs are paid, at 6x, some peps just dual box, infact. There was a stat posted by past GD, that most people MBox.

AO never was fair. Usually person with better gear and buffs won towers. Now person with better multibox. Bar was raised.

As long as most efficient way to kill in pvp is massed spam of concentrated fire... Mboxing will be most efficient way to get kills, and as such attractive. Should mechanics change greatly, to promote less spam, to engage multiple targets, then great pvp wont be a mbox fest.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Should mechanics change greatly, to promote less spam, to engage multiple targets, then great pvp wont be a mbox fest.

If mechanics invalidated heavy concentrated fire (i.e. significantly and rapidly deteriorating returns on every subsequent hit within a 1s buffer, say) then this would change the whole game. Imagine, say, vs player targets only, that only 1 hit would count for max damage each 1s, the second hit would count 50%, the third 25% and all others count 0%.

Consider the incredible difference it would make.

You could still use /assist and if you had 3 people in a team assisting, fine, but more than 3 would start to show significant degradation of damage done on a target very rapidly.

So, what would take on higher value in PVP?

On defence healing and HP would rule, with capped hits phasing out of importance in terms of worries, with survival/prolonging life becoming the most obvious success determining factor (as opposed to pure damage mitigation via blockers or evades)
1. HP
2. team heals
3. area heals like BG heals and bio rejuv
4. heal range
5. nano regen

Whereas on offense, area damage, NT area nukes, Enforcer area perks, and huge damage hits would play the biggest role. Any prof who had few attacks/perks but do massive damage with each one would gain value significantly (i.e. fixers with fling/AS/burst/FA would take a back seat to AR soldiers with potentially 10k bursts and 15k FA's, agents with big AS's, MA's with big bows, traders with silverback, etc. but support profs with pistols would almost be shunned/discouraged from assisting in order to not reduce timed caps on called targets, which would encourage weapon diversification, support weapon setups would broaden to utility weapons, debuffing would become a much bigger part of PVP, rooting, snaring, init debuffing, draining, all would be get big boosts in importance.

Anyone who MB's wouldn't gain such a distinct offensive advantage; however would enjoy far better survival, being able t stay in the fight 6x as long roughly as each subsequent toon died.

I think this would actually make it possible in some cases to actually fight towers while PVP was occurring and simply tank the defenders with enough debuffs, healing and damage mitigation if the defenders didn't choose good targets. PVP would becoming nearly continuous, with engies capable of warping back their teammates more rapidly in some cases than the opposing side could take them out of the fight, keepers on standby to rez remove...

This would completely, COMPLETELY switch notum wars from 80% PVT 20% PVP to 80% PVP and 20% PVT.

My god, it sounds awesome.

[Awikun]

McKnuckleSamwich your calculation is based on a big BS (not battle station but lie)!
You are wrong in assumption that every multiboxer is paying for 6 accounts.

In fact most of them have only 2 or 3 accounts and whenever they multibox 6 characters they are sharing accounts with other multiboxers.
IMHO the number of legitimate multiboxers is very low not sure if its 3, 5 or 7 ppl but I would bet quite a lot of money that it is less than 10.

Over the years I had alts in many orgs as well as I have friends in many orgs (some of them hate multiboxers some of them are multiboxers).
Most orgs expect or enfoce registering of all alts on org bots and over the years I have never seen a player with more than 30 alts.
I have seen players with 20-30 registered alts multiboxing team of 6 characters ...

Maybe you are really paying for 6 of your own accounts, I do not know and I can not verify this, so please do not take it as personal attack.
However I am 100% sure that you and some other "legitimate multiboxers" are in minority when looking as whole multiboxers in AO.

In theory account sharing is bannable offence but in fact FC cared about it for the first 2-3 years of AO. I even remember a big story of 2 great players who also were a couple in RL and both did a great job coding some of first orgbots/raidbots and other tools for AO. She (I can not remember her nick after all those years) admited on her blog or web page that sometime she logged characters of her boyfriend to chat or test some functionalities and FC banned both of them !!!

Today many ppl share accounts and FC does nothing about it.
I am not saying that this is bad but I would rather define when account sharing should be allowed and when it should lead to ban.

I do not mind:
1. Sharing froob account to hold bank of twinking items for org or group of friends
2. Sharing froob or paid account for buffing (all kind of buffs needed for twinking) no harm in loging other account to cast SFA and TT instead of buff begging in chat channels
3. Sharing froob or paid account for buffs like GSF, H&Q, fgrid, RRFE, Behe, CS etc. when your character needs those buffs for anything (blitzing, towers, quests etc)
the last borderline case of allowed account sharing should be dual (or tripple, quadrupple logging) scenario like this:
4. You log 1-2-3 of your lowbie characters + 1! shared character (usually level 220) to do things like Mantis daily, Prisoner daily, or Hecklers/Borg osting/kiting

The only thing that should be bannable offence would be using any kind of software that is used for multiboxing!
Please do not tell me that this is impossible to detect because it is not
Check how most reputable online poker sites (like pokerstars, fulltilt, partypoker etc) have done it:
They implement within their client a software detection tool that checks and report what other applications you are running because they prohibit quite a lot of tools that give certain players/cheaters unfair advantage...

FC could do the same and integrate within AO client such software detection tool.
That would solve problem of multiboxers and make happy most of AO community (except those few cheaters/multiboxers )

[Transform]

Now this get interesting again.

Let's play a game... named the 20 legit MB'er with 6 or more paid accounts

[Phatkeep]

Now this get interesting again.

Let's play a game... named the 20 legit MB'er with 6 or more paid accounts

YES!

In fact, let's make it more interesting than that. Let's also list ppl who quit, specifying MB as reason and let's see where we end up. + or -.

I'll be the first one.

I had 4 paid accs. Now no longer paying them.

[Cratertina]

4paid accoounts and not multiboxing?

[Phatkeep]

4paid accoounts and not multiboxing?

I tried it, yay I can instakill someone.

Then what?

I used to like the team play and team interaction. If I wanted a solo game where noone else is needed, I'd play something else. So no, that's not for me.

[Nycrow]

This morning, while confirming for myself that I had messed up and that the only place to get newcomer armor omni upgrade was in fact in Arete and that it is no drop, I saw a bevy of identical trox engineers all level 5 being prepped for a MB (it seemed).

I think it is a lot of work. I have never tried it and it is all I can do to manage my toon and interact / coordinate effectively with my full time play partner (wifey) and the org I am in or team I am grouped with.

Anyone who can (and I have seen it done well) manage the MB deserves whatever they get. I do wish that in all cases of PvP it was inactivated somehow. I honestly do not even really care if in PvM a program controls the MB but in PvP it should all be fingers and toes.

[sultryvoltron]

This morning, while confirming for myself that I had messed up and that the only place to get newcomer armor omni upgrade was in fact in Arete and that it is no drop, I saw a bevy of identical trox engineers all level 5 being prepped for a MB (it seemed).

I think it is a lot of work. I have never tried it and it is all I can do to manage my toon and interact / coordinate effectively with my full time play partner (wifey) and the org I am in or team I am grouped with.

Anyone who can (and I have seen it done well) manage the MB deserves whatever they get. I do wish that in all cases of PvP it was inactivated somehow. I honestly do not even really care if in PvM a program controls the MB but in PvP it should all be fingers and toes.

What's the difference between PvM and PvP though?

For example Desert Rider. If a multiboxer shows up and ODs your team of 4 because he simply has more characters is it still fair use in PvM?

[strohkirchw]

I tried it, yay I can instakill someone.

Then what?

I used to like the team play and team interaction. If I wanted a solo game where noone else is needed, I'd play something else. So no, that's not for me.

You implied just above that you quit because of people multiboxing. This would mean that you were in fact happy with the game but primarily left because of your interaction with people who multibox. The reasoning you just used sounds like it would apply much better to general low population not multiboxing.

[Phatkeep]

You implied just above that you quit because of people multiboxing. This would mean that you were in fact happy with the game but primarily left because of your interaction with people who multibox. The reasoning you just used sounds like it would apply much better to general low population not multiboxing.

No it doesn't.

[DarkerThanBlack]

Ok. Do an objective assessment.

Asking a hater to be objective is like teaching a gibbon monkey to play an eddie van halen guitar solo.

[Wrangeline]

How many MB'ers there are and how many accounts they pay for isn't really all that interesting (to me at least). Even if you focus on the monetary benefit of allowing MB'ing, the numbers are still pretty meaningless. This is because people that MB didn't create and maintain all their accounts in order to MB specifically and all those accounts wont go *poof* if MB suddenly became against the EULA. The concept of having multiple accounts and overlap'ing them during play is quite normal and has been long before MB'ing became a thing. If MB'ing became against the rules then the amount of accounts that would close down as a direct result of that would be fairly small. And if FC were to take their hands off the game design completely in fear of that, then I have no faith in them directing this game anyway.

There are some people that don't view MB'ing in PvP as a problem and think us that do are soft skinned or creating strawman-problems. But I think this is because they have a goal-oriented mentality, while people like me have an experience-oriented mentality. Let me explain what I mean by that. A goal-oriented mind will look at MB'ers as something to be played around. The goal is to find a solution to that "problem" and if a solution can be found then the problem goes away. Good for them. But for us with an experience-oriented mentality, we can see the same "solution" but we don't think that solution is conducive to what we consider a good gaming experience. What I need to enjoy PvP in any game is integrity of the PvP system and the game-world itself and one of the most important aspects of that integrity is "me vs you" and MB'ing specifically escalates that into "me vs whatever". I need to feel like I have a theoretical equal footing to everyone else around me in this game world and if you escalate to "whatever" then I have to do it as well in order to maintain my feeling of "me vs you". And this is why MB'ing is so retarded, because it trades simple dependable logical game design integrity for infinitely scalable chaos.

And I'm simply not going to pay for that gameplay experience. It's just not my thing.

[Cratertina]

Good point, experience oriented people must hate MB. I did read some articles via google search on multiboxing

And MMOs in general are slowly turning against it. From outright banning multiplying commands, to allowing just simple forms...

Timed events are mostly not allowed, in AO amongst other games.
Multiplying keyvstrokes mouse clicks to varius accoounts is allowed on one action per account per button pressed basis. (this is current AO)
And some have went to one action per press, so no sumultanious actions over many accounts. Traditional dual logging is in this zone.

Slowly industry is moving to third level of just multilogging but no boxing.

Personally as goal oriented player, i decided to not go multiboxing route, because then id solo even more, taking gametime away from hanging with online friends to farming solo.

Pvp wise, pvp is already a bad experience, multiboxing clearly does not improve it. But getting ganked by several players is just as unpleasing as getting.MBoxed.

Improve pvp interaction, make it more man vs man, less zerg vs single target.. And MBoxing in pvp wont be a problem no more.

[Phatkeep]

Pvp wise, pvp is already a bad experience,

Lots of ppl disagree. In fact, lots of ppl play or used to play AO not for endless pvm grinding, but for the end station. IE PVP.

multiboxing clearly does not improve it.

It takes away the point of building the best possible single toon. No need for the best gear, doing all the quest for nanos, getting maxed ai levels and research plus careful planning of IP. Just PL to whatever level you want to be, slap on a rifle, do a few ai dailies and voila, you can insta kill any opponent. The downside is ofc that you have to do everything multiple times. Or at least pay for the gear multiple times. In other words. it's pay to win.

But getting ganked by several players is just as unpleasing as getting.MBoxed.

It's not the same and we've repeated this probably a few thousand times now, so I don't understand how ppl still aren't getting this. But.. with a mb setup you can fire off every special at virtually the same instant. No need for coordination of any kind, no risk of ppl not paying attention or anything. You just press 1 button and the target is dead. Zero chance to evade or heal in that instant.

So a MB setup has killing effectiveness that not even a similar group has.

Improve pvp interaction, make it more man vs man, less zerg vs single target.. And MBoxing in pvp wont be a problem no more.

Or just say: MB not allowed anywhere in open world or BS and have a GM watch and ban a few ppl and the problem is solved. It's a few handfulls of ppl that engage in the lame stuff that is killing the pvp. They will be good boys if a few of their friends get banned. And if not. It's not a huge job to ban them all.

[Caloss2]

Give players knockback.

[Cratertina]

@phatkeep, you know, you can in theory use a mbox program to lunch specials on computers of multiple players and achieve same killing power?

So given perfect achievable teamwork 6 players can get same sync that mboxer has.. Same within latency constraints.

And it would be better because all chars would be more intelligently controled than simple /follow.

Mboxing just outgrew game design. But some day gamedesign will fight back.

You dont see mboxing an issue in FPS or RTS, just MMOs..

Making game more involving to play fixes mboxing, and arguably makes gameplay better.

Yeah or ban pvp multiboxing, make it proof by video and fix it that way. But funcom already decied against it.

[Phargus]

You dont see mboxing an issue in FPS or RTS, just MMOs..

Yeah, no one has ever gotten banned for using helper programs or "creative" tactics in an FPS. It's all solved with game mechanics.


Oh wait...