even though this is a cooperative PvE game, we are still trading with each other,
and are thus - in a sense - competing over resources, be it iron, gold or drops to sell to a vendor.
and i would like to think that when i play a game, that i am playing on even terms with the next guy.
having read through 6 pages of another thread, that was closed because of people battling over opinions on
botting, gold-farming, pay to win -
( https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1822/multi-boxing/view/page/6 ;)
if you intend to reply to this thread, please consider leaving out those subjects, or specify why it is relevant and related.
which brings me to ingame economy. I think that the price of everything will be
determined by the time it takes to farm it, and the difficulty thereof. which indirectly means that when
multi-boxing players go out and farm gold and drops -
that non-multiboxers have to spend more time in comparison to partake in the trading aspect of the game,.
"These are development forums folks, not normal game forums or platforms to argue over what you like best,
this is a tool for us to gather information and it is nearly impossible for me to read through these
to find acceptable reasonable pieces of feedback without coming across arguments, and that is the quickest
way to get a thread closed if multiple people engage in arguments over opinions.
We have made our stance very clear on this subject, no amount of arguing will change it" -quote Kilsin
so what do i hope to get out of this thread ?
explain to me if you can how multi-boxing will not have an impact on ingame economy,
and also i want to talk about a different way of endorsing the ability to play more than one character at once -
namely through the game client.
it would work like this: you have 1 hotbar pr character you are playing. (and a max nr of chars allowed)
that way everyone is playing on equal terms,
and you don't need additional software when you sit alone in japan or australia
looking for groups for hours and hours.
Goliant said:I think that the price of everything will be determined by the time it takes to farm it, and the difficulty thereof. which indirectly means that when
multi-boxing players go out and farm gold and drops -that non-multiboxers have to spend more time in comparison to partake in the trading aspect of the game,.
I think you will be disappointed. Pricing won't be dynamically adjusted based upon some arbitrary difficulty/time investment calculation. What takes 1 class X amount of time and effort could take another class X+Y amount of time.
Instead, pricing will most likely be pre-determined and NPC buy/sell prices will instead factor in race, stats (charisma) and faction standings...like so many games before this.
Goliant said:
so what do i hope to get out of this thread ?
explain to me if you can how multi-boxing will not have an impact on ingame economy.
Merely playing the game will have an impact on the game economy. Boxing will have little effect. VR has stated their intent that the combat mechanics will themselves discourage multi-boxing as so much effort will be needed to effectively play one character that playing a second simultaneously will not prove advantageous. That said, people will still do it regardless. Full disclosure, I will be one of those people.
Goliant said:
and also i want to talk about a different way of endorsing the ability to play more than one character at once -
namely through the game client.
So if I understand your point, you don't want people multi-boxing because you believe it will adversely affect the economy yet you also want the client to promote multi-boxing through in-game tools? You can't have both.
fair points, the way i see it: if you can kill a camp twice as fast, then your income is significantly higher, and thus it will prove to be advantageous, (but it is speculation).
and you understand my point, leaving my personal opinion out of it : if multiboxing is promoted as a thing people should just do, then why not go all the way and make that experience nice.
switch characters with a click, controll all of them from the same screen /follow etc, supported by the game client.
Ive never like "botters" but usually its because of a gaggle of botters mowing me over on a pvp realm. Eight on one isnt fun. Especially if they are all occupying the same space and acting in unison.
Im with Goliant, if they allow boxing then i hope they have a server where they dont allow them.
Boxing will have a rather large effect on the game. By its basic design, it allows a single player to achieve results that would be impossible or limited if they were a single class playing. That allows players to gain items they would normally have to get a group to obtain (and also share the rewards in doing so). There is also the fact that boxing allows for faster (and capable) money grind farming giving the solo player the ability to obtain large sums of cash over shorter periods of time due to being able to disregard any of their bots in favor of one (which would not be as common when other players are involved).
So, yes, it will have a dramatic effect on the econmy as large cash flows from grind farming come in and various spots for rare drops are more easily farmed. There was one guild on a server I played that boxed a full raid back in the day when there wasn't fancy software to handle it and he was still able to farm raid zones like Sleepers (he would charge real money to take a player to the zone and let them loot all the raid drops). Imagine if a single player with early 2k tech raiding as a solo player is possible, what is possible today with all the software/hardware available to basic boxing at affordable costs? I am interested to see how VR's game play is going to stifle such, but I am not convinced they will be able to deliver on that.
Even if they allow such as a server option, I doubt it will make any difference anyway. Most boxers do such to gain an advantage and getting away with boxing on a server that disallows it will be the best place to gain advantage (it is why optional RMT servers never worked because players didn't want to play with other people cheating, they wanted to have an advantage on servers where most weren't).
In the end it doesn't really matter, the economy will be skewed very quickly regardless and for the most part be pointless unless you are an avid market trader/gamer.
Kalok said:They have said that they will not actively stop boxing, but that they hope to make the game challenging enough to make it difficult to box. That said, they are ALSO NOT going to support boxing. That is the long and the short of it.
I just don't think they are going to be able to make it difficult, not with the numerous tools available to automate the player in achieving it (and I am not talking about botting AI, rather simple scripting to assist control over multiple characters). Them not supporting it really doesn't matter I think as one can achieve pretty much any result with the various tools out there. The only thing that might have some (and it would be a tough battle) is if they actively developed to combat it, and even then, people would still end up doing it. The only differnce is that by their current stance, they can't do anything about it now as they have allowed it.
Goliant said:
"Even if they allow such as a server option, I doubt it will make any difference anyway. "
if there is 1 server for people not wanting to multi-box, (possibly without /follow and /stick)
then probably most multi-boxers will play on any one of the other servers
Not likely. Boxing isn't done because people can't find groups, it is done to "get ahead" and to allow the individual to make gains without being required to find group support. The less people boxing, the more benefit boxing provides you an advantage. It is as I said with the RMT servers that SoE tried to implement. Part of their failure was that many people continued to play on the no-RMT servers because the entire point of RMT is to gain advantage over the game (and those you are playing/competing with) and if everyone is doing RMT, there is no advantage.
That is not to say people won't play on boxing servers, they will, but there will be many boxing on non-boxing servers as well.
There is a strong demand in this community for strictly enforced no-box servers. It shouldn't be a surprise seeing that the foundation of this game is built around the idea of player interdependence and shared experiences. The common argument that I have seen is "there is no way to prevent 100% of boxing" -- it would be tough to track and enforce. That's fine. I don't think people are disillusioned with the idea that 100% of boxing can be prevented through the client. There will always be people out there that look to cleverly circumvent the rules. The important distinction is that if boxing is strictly forbidden, they would be playing in fear. No matter how clever someone is it would be really difficult to dedicate yourself to this kind of game, where reputation matters, and where accomplishments actually mean something, if you know that you can lose all of your hard work in an instant if you're caught. I have no doubt that some people would try to cheat the system and that's fine. I have faith in the community and feel confident that the vast majority of multi-boxers would be exposed under their watchful eyes.
oneADseven said:There is a strong demand in this community for strictly enforced no-box servers. It shouldn't be a surprise seeing that the foundation of this game is built around the idea of player interdependence and shared experiences. The common argument that I have seen is "there is no way to prevent 100% of boxing" -- it would be tough to track and enforce. That's fine. I don't think people are disillusioned with the idea that 100% of boxing can be prevented through the client. There will always be people out there that look to cleverly circumvent the rules. The important distinction is that if boxing is strictly forbidden, they would be playing in fear. No matter how clever someone is it would be really difficult to dedicate yourself to this kind of game, where reputation matters, and where accomplishments actually mean something, if you know that you can lose all of your hard work in an instant if you're caught. I have no doubt that some people would try to cheat the system and that's fine. I have faith in the community and feel confident that the vast majority of multi-boxers would be exposed under their watchful eyes.
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that since it can't be stopped, it should be allowed, just pointing out that it will still be a fairly big problem.
I have thought about how to avoid such and it can be done, but... it would be very "intrusive" to setup up an account to do so. With enough information required to play, and a policy of banning not only the account, but the owner and any related credit/bank accounts, you would GREATLY reduce its occurence. Requiring a credit card only would go a long way to stopping the issue.
Tanix said: ... Requiring a credit card only would go a long way to stopping the issue.
Correct. This was described last year on the pantheon subreddit. It's just regionalization, like Amazon does with credit cards knowing what country they're from. Personalize that (the way some current anti-fraud measures work) and you've got a solution. It even works through NATs so everyone in the same household can play together.
But yes, a voluntary no-box server ruleset would be awesome. And I would play on it exclusively. Everyone else can go play with the bot armies, doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Vandraad said:Goliant said:I think that the price of everything will be determined by the time it takes to farm it, and the difficulty thereof. which indirectly means that when
multi-boxing players go out and farm gold and drops -that non-multiboxers have to spend more time in comparison to partake in the trading aspect of the game,.I think you will be disappointed. Pricing won't be dynamically adjusted based upon some arbitrary difficulty/time investment calculation. What takes 1 class X amount of time and effort could take another class X+Y amount of time.
Instead, pricing will most likely be pre-determined and NPC buy/sell prices will instead factor in race, stats (charisma) and faction standings...like so many games before this.
He's not talking about vendor prices, he's talking about the player economy which will absolutely be impacted, to what degree nobody can know. Boxing allows individual people to increase the rate at which supply is generated.
oneADseven said:There is a strong demand in this community for strictly enforced no-box servers. It shouldn't be a surprise seeing that the foundation of this game is built around the idea of player interdependence and shared experiences. The common argument that I have seen is "there is no way to prevent 100% of boxing" -- it would be tough to track and enforce. That's fine. I don't think people are disillusioned with the idea that 100% of boxing can be prevented through the client. There will always be people out there that look to cleverly circumvent the rules. The important distinction is that if boxing is strictly forbidden, they would be playing in fear. No matter how clever someone is it would be really difficult to dedicate yourself to this kind of game, where reputation matters, and where accomplishments actually mean something, if you know that you can lose all of your hard work in an instant if you're caught. I have no doubt that some people would try to cheat the system and that's fine. I have faith in the community and feel confident that the vast majority of multi-boxers would be exposed under their watchful eyes.
Additionally, as I think we've discussed before, if they can ban by gpuid and cpuid and not just IP address, that sort of permanence will scare a lot of people straight, and hopefully get rid of most of the rest. There will always be people circumventing and spoofing, but also as you said, a community who really cares about the integrity of the game can do a lot to help their own server.
oneADseven said:There is a strong demand in this community for strictly enforced no-box servers. It shouldn't be a surprise seeing that the foundation of this game is built around the idea of player interdependence and shared experiences. The common argument that I have seen is "there is no way to prevent 100% of boxing" -- it would be tough to track and enforce. That's fine. I don't think people are disillusioned with the idea that 100% of boxing can be prevented through the client. There will always be people out there that look to cleverly circumvent the rules. The important distinction is that if boxing is strictly forbidden, they would be playing in fear. No matter how clever someone is it would be really difficult to dedicate yourself to this kind of game, where reputation matters, and where accomplishments actually mean something, if you know that you can lose all of your hard work in an instant if you're caught. I have no doubt that some people would try to cheat the system and that's fine. I have faith in the community and feel confident that the vast majority of multi-boxers would be exposed under their watchful eyes.
Yeah I'd love to see a no multibox allowed server. Not a fan of the practice at all, not good for the community aspects of an MMORPG.
I think P99 is a good example of an environment where boxing still occurs to a limited extent but isn't allowed. Does it ruin the game in moderation? No.
My big complaint with boxing servers is not that someone else has an advantage over me, it's that prevalent boxing is detrimental to building a strong player community where people routinely group.
If offered, I too would elect to play on a no-boxing server. If there's going to be an RP preferred server with more enforcement of character naming, I also hope that's (one of) the no-boxing server(s).
Tanix said:Not likely. Boxing isn't done because people can't find groups, it is done to "get ahead"..
these are all good reasons and there are many more,
we are all "the good guys" box or nobox.
but i hope visionary realms acknowledges that the community is split on this subject and tries to understand why i and others would want to play on a server without multiboxers.
ingame economy being a personal reason
Goliant said:Tanix said:Not likely. Boxing isn't done because people can't find groups, it is done to "get ahead"..
having read through the other threads, many legitimate reasons are stated for wanting to multibox, that i can understand:
not having time to find a group
being online when others aren't
would have logged off, if not for second account
not wanting to deal with losing a keyrole in a group
or just outright only want to play alone
etc.these are all good reasons and there are many more,
we are all "the good guys" box or nobox.
but i hope visionary realms acknowledges that the community is split on this subject and tries to understand why i and others would want to play on a server without multiboxers.
ingame economy being a personal reason
Frankly, in a game with a monthly sub fee for each account, paying VR for 2 accounts is all the valid reason anyone needs, imo(another reason I'd like the price to be more than $15/mo). I say this while agreeing that boxing has negative impacts on community and server health and agreeing that a solo ruleset server would be a good thing.
Goliant said:
Tanix said:
Not likely. Boxing isn't done because people can't find groups, it is done to "get ahead"..
having read through the other threads, many legitimate reasons are stated for wanting to multibox, that i can understand:
not having time to find a group
being online when others aren't
would have logged off, if not for second account
not wanting to deal with losing a keyrole in a group
or just outright only want to play alone
etc.
these are all good reasons and there are many more,
we are all "the good guys" box or nobox.
but i hope visionary realms acknowledges that the community is split on this subject and tries to understand why i and others would want to play on a server without multiboxers.
ingame economy being a personal reason
Let us consider such.
1. Not having time to find a group.
Play a class that might have the ability to solo, work on crafting, explore, etc... That is what we did in early EQ. Wanting to Box is wanting an advantage.
2. being online when others aren't
It is a social game, find other people to play with. In release EQ, I often went and looked for others to group with. I formed my own groups if people weren't on and I made a long list of friends and other guilds. This is the point of a social game. It is not a solo game for a reason. Boxing is an excuse to solo, an advantage over that requirement.
3. would have logged off, if not for second account
They wanted an advantage. So rather than seeking a group, being social, or doing many other things... they need an advantage, a "reward" above what other single players have to do. They wanted to play a group game solo… Wrong game for them.
4. not wanting to deal with losing a keyrole in a group
They didn't want to find a replacement or... learn how to make due with less than optimal group design. They wanted an advantage over normal play obstacles. It was a common occurrence to figure out how to function as a group with less than ideal classes. This is HOW emergent game play came about in EQ. WE didn’t have the easy solution of just logging in multiple accounts early on and we had to actually make what we had available work.
5. or just outright only want to play alone
Again, pick a class that "might" have some success at soloing. Otherwise, go play a solo game. Why come to a game that is based on community, based on groups, and expect to solo?
I played EQ on release, we had to deal with all of those issues before people started trying to multi-box. It was called balancing the pros/cons of your play and your choice in class, race, location, etc... all had an effect on your ability. That was EQ, that was playing a game, that was the fun of it.
Boxing is an easy solution for those issues to make it easier. Boxing is for convenience, ease of play, an advantage over having to deal with the issues within the game.
Basically, they sought an advantage.