Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

The ability to solo.

    • 8 posts
    July 3, 2021 1:11 PM PDT

    My question is this:

    Given that the primary focus of the game is to get back to grouping and community, and really bring back that Everquest style game play where you have pullers, and tanks, and support, and healers. And given how much multi-boxing ruined Everquest 1 by allowing one player to play several characters thus destroying that. Allowing one person to monoplize content or "camps", and thus pushing out single players. And given also that as the community out grows lower level content, and then the player base in those areas no longer supports group play.

    Does Pantheon have any plans to make a mentoring system like Everquest 2?

    Does Pantheon allow for classes to solo? Albeit, slower, and not as efficient as a group or a dungeon dive would provide. Will there be a system in place like questing, like smaller camps, to cater to players who do find them self playing alone or during "off" hours?

    And lastly, does Pantheon have any plans to punish and break up multi-boxers so that history does not repeat itself?

    • 1992 posts
    July 3, 2021 2:26 PM PDT

    Taichang said:

    Does Pantheon have any plans to make a mentoring system like Everquest 2?

    Does Pantheon allow for classes to solo? Albeit, slower, and not as efficient as a group or a dungeon dive would provide. Will there be a system in place like questing, like smaller camps, to cater to players who do find them self playing alone or during "off" hours?

    And lastly, does Pantheon have any plans to punish and break up multi-boxers so that history does not repeat itself?

    Mentoring was originally intended to be in. Last I heard it will not be in at launch. I'm not aware of VR saying it was entirely out, but if I'm wrong it won't take long for someone to come along and correct me.

    As for the other 2 questions, the first 7 min of this vid will tell you the most current info we have on those subjects.

    https://youtu.be/q36fEH201QY


    This post was edited by Jothany at July 3, 2021 2:27 PM PDT
    • 409 posts
    July 3, 2021 3:14 PM PDT

    Taichang said:

    My question is this:

    Given that the primary focus of the game is to get back to grouping and community, and really bring back that Everquest style game play where you have pullers, and tanks, and support, and healers. And given how much multi-boxing ruined Everquest 1 by allowing one player to play several characters thus destroying that. Allowing one person to monoplize content or "camps", and thus pushing out single players. And given also that as the community out grows lower level content, and then the player base in those areas no longer supports group play.

    Multiboxing didn't ruin EverQuest, it is what has allowed to exist for coming up on 23 years. Thing is, not only is multiboxing easy to put a stop to, but stopping it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of camping content. P1999 has a very effective anti-boxing setup, and one guild controls access to almost all important content for stuff like epic weapons, VP keys, NToV, etc. You want a Hate drop, then you have to not only pay, but pay to get on a waiting list. No boxing, just an uberguild dominating a single server. Non-instanced content is easy to lock people out of.

    So what fixes this? Two things, both introduced to MMO gaming by the other groundbreaker - Anarchy Online. Instancing and on-demand triggered raid/group content were invented by FunCom in AO, and boxing happened there plenty, but you weren't locked out of content because almost everything meaningful was instanced or triggered. EDIT - technically, stuff like the 10th Ring War and other Velious content was triggered content, but AO had triggered content that didn't disrupt other players in the zone when the triggers happened. So they kinda did it at the same time, sorta.

    Why would a company that will survive on subscriptions discourage players from having more than one? Makes no sense from any business standpoint. If people want to box to avoid LFG, why would VR stop them from having 2-6 subs in order to be anti-social? Just instance the meaningful content and let them box to their heart's content.

    Taichang said:

    Does Pantheon have any plans to make a mentoring system like Everquest 2?

    Does Pantheon allow for classes to solo? Albeit, slower, and not as efficient as a group or a dungeon dive would provide. Will there be a system in place like questing, like smaller camps, to cater to players who do find them self playing alone or during "off" hours?

    And lastly, does Pantheon have any plans to punish and break up multi-boxers so that history does not repeat itself?

    Mentoring is just a way to carry newbs and letr the higher level player profit. Pretty simple toggle switch really.

    Soloing defeats group-centric game design, but if enterprising gamers learn how to solo in a game not built for it, good for them. Why care? Make ONE friend, and between the two of you, make sure you have one heal spell and one snare. Done, you now have everything a group will need to grind exp. Adding more people just buffs exp rate and where you can grind. 

    And lastly, once again, why discourage more subs for a game you want to succeed? Just put important items/drops and good exp grind behind instancing and triggered content. Then boxing will not have any effect on you whatsoever, and will really only serve to push more subs.


    This post was edited by Venjenz at July 3, 2021 3:17 PM PDT
    • 8 posts
    July 3, 2021 3:37 PM PDT

    Venjenz said:

    Mentoring is just a way to carry newbs and letr the higher level player profit. Pretty simple toggle switch really.

    Soloing defeats group-centric game design, but if enterprising gamers learn how to solo in a game not built for it, good for them. Why care? Make ONE friend, and between the two of you, make sure you have one heal spell and one snare. Done, you now have everything a group will need to grind exp. Adding more people just buffs exp rate and where you can grind. 

    And lastly, once again, why discourage more subs for a game you want to succeed? Just put important items/drops and good exp grind behind instancing and triggered content. Then boxing will not have any effect on you whatsoever, and will really only serve to push more subs.



    -Mentoring is in my humble opinion just a way to not punish players who want to go and level faster and play harder then their friends. So that when they (your friends) are say level 20 and you are level 50, you can go back and still hangout with them and not feel punished for wanting to play the game harder. I feel like this not about carrying "noobs" as much as it is about leaving a lane open to players to connect and play with friends who all play the game differently and at different paces.

    -The soloing I'm mostly talking about, is when you can't find a full group at 5am in the morning. Or you just had a day where you wanted to do your own thing at your own pace, maybe you're doing laundry as well as gaming. I'm mostly curious if the game is going to make it impossible to solo in those cases. But then make it rewarding when you do decide to play with others. I just want to know that there is a less optimal way to level via soloing and not require every bit of content to require a group.

    -And instancing in this game wont happen. I'm pretty sure they said was only going to be to raid content. The reason they need to remove the abiltity for players to multi-box content is because the persons who only wants to play 1 toon is having 5-6 players pushed aside so one single player can control an area. That is the antithesis of the direction of the game who's whole identity is group content by a community.

    • 409 posts
    July 3, 2021 3:52 PM PDT

    Taichang said:

     

    -The soloing I'm mostly talking about, is when you can't find a full group at 5am in the morning. Or you just had a day where you wanted to do your own thing at your own pace, maybe you're doing laundry as well as gaming. I'm mostly curious if the game is going to make it impossible to solo in those cases. But then make it rewarding when you do decide to play with others. I just want to know that there is a less optimal way to level via soloing and not require every bit of content to require a group.

    If you need a casual game at 5 AM or whjile doing laundry, then do crafting, or play windows solitaire. Why on Earth should a group centric, old school MMO have any content that is so easy it can be solo'd by someone doing their laundry and watching Netflix? Whatever THAT content is, the majority of the playerbase will do nothing but. Unless.... (see below)

    Taichang said:

    And instancing in this game wont happen. I'm pretty sure they said was only going to be to raid content. The reason they need to remove the abiltity for players to multi-box content is because the persons who only wants to play 1 toon is having 5-6 players pushed aside so one single player can control an area. That is the antithesis of the direction of the game who's whole identity is group content by a community.

    If they have no instancing, they'll fail. The soloable 5 AM thing you speak of above was invented by AO. The mission terminal. You set the parameters to what your class/gear could handle, and off you go, and the exp rate was mind numbingly slow compared to grouping almost anywhere doing anything else, including group missions. But they did have on-demand, easy 15-30 minute chunk exp content for the 5 AM laundry/Netflix crowd. 

    Anything easy like that needs to be absurdly low exp, instanced and hidden behind a door/portal that only some "are you sure" dialogue box opens.

    Lots of ways to not have a solo friendly game but still allow people to make even slow progress to the exp bar if they cannot be bothered to LFG.


    This post was edited by Venjenz at July 3, 2021 3:52 PM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    July 3, 2021 3:56 PM PDT

    Like was mentioned, a mentor system is still planned but it was pushed to "post launch" a couple years ago ( the caravan system was also pushed to post launch during the same announcement).


    This post was edited by philo at July 3, 2021 3:56 PM PDT
    • 8 posts
    July 3, 2021 4:20 PM PDT

    Venjenz said:

    If you need a casual game at 5 AM or whjile doing laundry, then do crafting, or play windows solitaire. Why on Earth should a group centric, old school MMO have any content that is so easy it can be solo'd by someone doing their laundry and watching Netflix? Whatever THAT content is, the majority of the playerbase will do nothing but. Unless.... (see below)



    The point I think your missing is that even in a group centric game you're not always going to find groups. DPS for example, not every group is going to have room for all the different DPS, or maybe you're playing a class like an enchanter where only one is needed per group. And making the game impossible to play when that occurs is in itself absurd. So if a player is unable to find a group you'd rather that person log off and not play at all? Not every single moment you play is going to be full groups all the time. There are down times, normal working hours when less people are logged on, holidays, middle of the night, heck maybe you just wanna do your own thing for a few hours and listen to music. The game must contain content that can be played solo in those times. No mentoring system flat out means lower level zones are going to become barren. That's just the nature of how MMOs are. So what then? Do players just log off because there's no way for them to level with no other players there? Thus exclude them from the ability to play merely because there is no content that can be done by yourself? I'm not suggesting they make the entire game solo friendly. I'm merely suggesting that not every single second of the game needs to require a full group to level or accomplish something. I'm asking VR if they have any plans to make content designed to allow players to solo when needed.

    I.E.

    Quest hubs, with quest that provide gear rewards, smaller encampments of mobs, smaller bite size dungeons, maybe mobs that are less numerous but plentiful in open areas.



    • 1860 posts
    July 3, 2021 4:34 PM PDT

    Taichang said:

     The game must contain content that can be played solo in those times. No mentoring system flat out means lower level zones are going to become barren. 




    Soloing will be possible.  It will be easier for some classes than others and will likely be a much slower method of advancement.  

    A mentor system is not the only way to relieve the high end bottleneck and populate lower level zones.  Remort systems like progeny minimize the high end bottleneck better than any mentor system (assuming incentive and proper implementation) because it diminishes the high end bottleneck more permanently than in mentor systems that only require the player to delevel temporarily.

    VR is also being quite heavy handed with horizontal progression that should spread out the playerbase.  They have commented multiple times that players who rush to max level will be unprepared for the challenges that await.  They will have to go back and attain items that allow them to advance through much of the content.  



    This post was edited by philo at July 3, 2021 5:26 PM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    July 3, 2021 4:59 PM PDT

    Taichang said:

    My question is this:

    Given that the primary focus of the game is to get back to grouping and community, and really bring back that Everquest style game play where you have pullers, and tanks, and support, and healers. And given how much multi-boxing ruined Everquest 1 by allowing one player to play several characters thus destroying that. Allowing one person to monoplize content or "camps", and thus pushing out single players. And given also that as the community out grows lower level content, and then the player base in those areas no longer supports group play.

    Does Pantheon have any plans to make a mentoring system like Everquest 2?

    Does Pantheon allow for classes to solo? Albeit, slower, and not as efficient as a group or a dungeon dive would provide. Will there be a system in place like questing, like smaller camps, to cater to players who do find them self playing alone or during "off" hours?

    And lastly, does Pantheon have any plans to punish and break up multi-boxers so that history does not repeat itself?

    Your post has some great questions that we have been talking about for years.

    1) Mentoring - It's been talked about. Some people are in favor of this, some are not. The current plan is that if they do add it, it will likely be post-launch. However, I do not see how Mentoring would resolve the issue you brought up of solo play. Maybe you could further explain how you see it would help the solo game.

    2) Solo - Yes, you can solo, both craft and hunt, and they are not specifically implimenting systems into the game so that you can't solo. What there will likely not be is a 'solo character narative', at least that's not currently planned. What they are doing is making the game so that the best gear will require grouping. There will be mobs you can solo but the best gear/resources will require groups/raids. For quest, they haven’t really said or demoed much with questing. However, a big part of questing will be the Perception system which is something that is for you, the player, and not necessary a group thing. Perception is a system where you are able to discover things about the game world or the denizens within it. There will be Perception quest and story to follow as a solo player. I would be surprised if they also do not include some solo quests.

    3) Multi-boxers - They are not specifically putting in place ways to punish multi-boxers, yet. What they are doing is designing a combat system that is so complex that it would be very unlikely someone would be successful in multiboxing an entire group, which essentially does defeat it.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at July 3, 2021 5:06 PM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    July 3, 2021 5:16 PM PDT

    bigdogchris said:

    3) Multi-boxers - They are not specifically putting in place ways to punish multi-boxers, yet. What they are doing is designing a combat system that is so complex that it would be very unlikely someone would be successful in multiboxing an entire group, which essentially does defeat it.

    That was the original stance but that was reassesed awhile back. It is outdated information.

    They haven't talked about exactly how they plan on regulating multiboxing, just that it is a concern and they are "moving towards a hard line approach to prohibit that behavior".

    Here is a quote from Joppa:

    https://youtu.be/ccJw9KwzVy4?t=570

     


    This post was edited by philo at July 3, 2021 5:32 PM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    July 3, 2021 6:52 PM PDT

    philo said:

    That was the original stance but that was reassesed awhile back. It is outdated information.

    They haven't talked about exactly how they plan on regulating multiboxing, just that it is a concern and they are "moving towards a hard line approach to prohibit that behavior".

    Here is a quote from Joppa:

    https://youtu.be/ccJw9KwzVy4?t=570

     

    Credit for being able to quickly find that quote in countless videos. Good memory!

    To be frank though, I doubt they will impliment a system to block multiple connections from the same network. How will they prove it's not multiple players? There would have to be some type of play nice policy that is GM enforceable, but even then, how could you ever prove a person is multi-boxing and it's not just 2 people playing at the same home.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at July 3, 2021 6:53 PM PDT
    • 8 posts
    July 3, 2021 6:56 PM PDT

    bigdogchris said:

    Maybe you could further explain how you see it would help the solo game.

     

    So I see this like this:

    Let's say me and my 4 other friends all play a different class each, and we all play different hours. Let's say I play for 15 hours a day, and my other buddy and his wife who only play together play 5 hours a day. Naturally I am going to out level them. So now I'm level 45 Paladin tank and the rest the community hasn't yet caught up to us no lifers. So I'm really struggling to find a group at level 45, but my buddies are level 20 and have everyone but a tank in their group. I get to mentor down to level 20, have fun, get a group, not have to solo level 45 content & a group gets their last memeber. Everyone wins.

    Mentoring also provides group flexablity to soloing players & helps build community.

    • 1860 posts
    July 3, 2021 8:17 PM PDT

    bigdogchris said:

     How will they prove it's not multiple players? There would have to be some type of play nice policy that is GM enforceable, but even then, how could you ever prove a person is multi-boxing and it's not just 2 people playing at the same home.


    The same way they do in other games?  Joppa did mention alternate servers if necessary.  I don't want to derail this thread to much.  That's a whole other discussion.

    • 810 posts
    July 3, 2021 9:45 PM PDT

    Mentoring is a great tool I hope they find a way to add it in fairly early.  I would be perfectly happy if all mentor xp was mastery only. 

    As for soloing yes, some classes will have an easier time at it.  This won't be WoW where every class solos easily.  It will be more like EQ prior to being wowified. You can solo way better because you are a necro and not a warrior.  Who knows what those classes will truly be in the end, for now we can only speculate.  I would be perfectly happy if you could only slowly solo single green mobs without great risk.  It will eventually have the player base issue, but the game itself is so much more satisfying in that initial launch.

    Multi boxers running on a single system is easy enough to detect VMs depending on if people are comfortable with their anticheat software having access levels I despise, but understand.  My guess is that will be the main block and they will use manual verification beyond that.  Nothing has been decided yet other than they are leaning towards blocking them. 

     

    Boxers in Eve online gave me a strong hatred that lasts to this day.  I hope they stay on this ban direction. 

    • 246 posts
    July 4, 2021 6:18 AM PDT
    Well with the ai and some of the other skills for the PC I don't think it's going to be very easy or possible to duel box. And soloing u will find some that will find away but for the most part it's not being built for it. If u want some solo stuff do so e crafting or selling dumpster diving
    • 1281 posts
    July 4, 2021 7:40 AM PDT

    philo said:

    bigdogchris said:

     How will they prove it's not multiple players? There would have to be some type of play nice policy that is GM enforceable, but even then, how could you ever prove a person is multi-boxing and it's not just 2 people playing at the same home.

    The same way they do in other games?  Joppa did mention alternate servers if necessary.  I don't want to derail this thread to much.  That's a whole other discussion.

    I don't think it is derailing.  He asked, and we're discussing parts of that concern. Care to elaborate on what some other games are doing to combat this?

    • 3852 posts
    July 4, 2021 8:01 AM PDT

    I very much hope that solo content will be built into Pantheon. Firstly, there are many times for almost any of us that grouping is not feasible. Not enough time to stay on while a group forms, gets to the desired content and then adventures. Too many real world interruptions, perhaps on short notice and perhaps not allowing even a minute delay while a fight is finished. Just two of many possibilities. The more people have something they *can* do when they log on the longer they will subscribe. Crafting is a good use of time for some of us, at some times, but a game where you might as well not play other than to craft unless you have two to four uninterrupted hours is not going to last long. Secondly some people will like many of the features of Pantheon but not be very interested in grouping. Their subscriptions will support the game just as much as the money from true groupies.

    How can this be done without undercutting the group-focus? 

    1. Don't have a special "solo story line". But it takes almost no developer time if any population center or other hub has a few quests to kill 10 pigs or find a lost child or backpack.

    2. Have areas with soloable mobs scattered all through the game. In spots where groups have no reason to run through them on the way to group content. Maybe even code them so if pulled by a group only the puller gets any xp or loot so they are not too attractive to groups. But that may be overkill.

    3. Have experience per hour significantly less for a solo player killing these mobs than for someone in a group. We do not want solo play to be competitive with group play but we do want it to be a reason to log on and pay subscription money when you cannot group or just don't want to.

    4. Have loot significantly inferior to what can be gotten in a group for the same reason.


    This post was edited by dorotea at July 4, 2021 8:03 AM PDT
    • 409 posts
    July 4, 2021 9:42 AM PDT

    Taichang said:

     

    The point I think your missing is that even in a group centric game you're not always going to find groups. DPS for example, not every group is going to have room for all the different DPS, or maybe you're playing a class like an enchanter where only one is needed per group. And making the game impossible to play when that occurs is in itself absurd. So if a player is unable to find a group you'd rather that person log off and not play at all? Not every single moment you play is going to be full groups all the time. There are down times, normal working hours when less people are logged on, holidays, middle of the night, heck maybe you just wanna do your own thing for a few hours and listen to music. The game must contain content that can be played solo in those times. No mentoring system flat out means lower level zones are going to become barren. That's just the nature of how MMOs are. So what then? Do players just log off because there's no way for them to level with no other players there? Thus exclude them from the ability to play merely because there is no content that can be done by yourself? I'm not suggesting they make the entire game solo friendly. I'm merely suggesting that not every single second of the game needs to require a full group to level or accomplish something. I'm asking VR if they have any plans to make content designed to allow players to solo when needed.

    I.E.

    Quest hubs, with quest that provide gear rewards, smaller encampments of mobs, smaller bite size dungeons, maybe mobs that are less numerous but plentiful in open areas.

    You want a soloable MMO, period. Got it. Everyone could solo in EQ1...it may have been painful and slow for some (WAR, ROG), but they could solo. That's all group centric means. Soloing can be done, but painfully and slowly compared to grouping. 

    Every one of your questions/replies seems to indicate a belief that nobody will ever find a group for the stuff they need to group for, nobody will have friends, and if you only want to play for 15-60 minutes, you simply cannot play, etc. None of this is true, and is a fantasy world that exists almost entirely on game forums rather than in the game itself. 

    Some classes will solo better than others in a properly designed class based group game. MAKE AN ALT. Or....make some friends. Make a healer. Make a tank. Do crafting, or harvesting, or any of about a bazillion things one can do in even the most hardcore group centric MMO to pass some time solo. 

    But if they make any important part of the game soloable, then that content will be solo'd almost exclusively. A slow, mind numbing solo exp grind? Sure, I aalready pointed out how to do it, and in Anarchy Online, they even put a decent piece of gear behind it (search mission token board shoulder item). But nothing of great importance should be soloable by level/gear appropriate players. Not in a group centric game.

    • 1860 posts
    July 4, 2021 4:03 PM PDT

    bigdogchris said:

    . Care to elaborate on what some other games are doing to combat this?


    My multiboxing experience is limited so someone else might be able to give better examples?

    Generally, where multiboxing is not allowed you may not have more than one client running per real life person playing. 

    Sometimes IP blocking is involved but players can apply for an IP exemption if multiple people in their house play. They have to agree to whatever boxing restrictions are in place regardless of IP exemptions.  Other players tend to be the best police.  If players know something isn't allowed they are quick to report players breaking the rules.  It is fairly easy to tell who is boxing if you watch them.

    Like Joppa said, servers where boxing is allowed could be a solution as well.  That seems like an extreme solution but it's an option.


    This post was edited by philo at July 4, 2021 4:03 PM PDT
    • 810 posts
    July 4, 2021 10:23 PM PDT
    I really like the idea of putting them with eachother for boxing. It would be a server flooded with items, but very annoying to play on. Make it so they can't transfer off server lol. No boxed PLers selling accounts. No sneaky pvpers where 4 PCs all cast aimed shot.
    • 1921 posts
    July 5, 2021 8:46 AM PDT

    IMO:

    Would love to see multibox and no-box servers at launch, myself.  I don't personally see it as an extreme solution, seems more like an expected feature, at this point.
    Having the choice whereby every player character in the world is a real person doesn't seem like an extraordinary expectation. :)

    As far as solutions others have used, this has been 5+ years now, but a financial institution I did some work for in the past used geoIP w/ AVS to assign trust to customer auth for securing FI transactions.
    What it boiled down to was if your GeoIP didn't match the postal code of your credit card (or zip code in the USA) then you needed to TOTP re-auth.
    It solves the problem of people using VPNs to bypass IP restrictions for MMOs, too, provided the MMO vendor is willing to require a credit card issued in their respective server-hosted country, to play.
    They stored a very brief history of connections and provided your GeoIP/AVS hadn't changed, it was transparent, and user acceptance was very high.

    And of course, if someone doesn't want to play on an optional no-box server, they can go play on the multibox with 5 virtual KVM/script slaved VPN accounts 24x7. :P
    In VR's case, they could require a server-hosted-country-issued credit card for the no-box server only, as an option, too.

    If anyone is interested, the maxmind database is what was used, and it's only a few dollars a month in subscription cost for updates to that service.  The actual geoip lookups are all done locally in c/cpp at the moment of connection, and only take a few microseconds.  Real-time CC address validation (AVS) is provided by many payment clearing APIs, and is trivial in cost.

    • 3852 posts
    July 5, 2021 9:26 AM PDT

    ((But if they make any important part of the game soloable, then that content will be solo'd almost exclusively. A slow, mind numbing solo exp grind? Sure, I aalready pointed out how to do it, and in Anarchy Online, they even put a decent piece of gear behind it (search mission token board shoulder item). But nothing of great importance should be soloable by level/gear appropriate players. Not in a group centric game.))

     

    Allowing solo play will not produce the result you fear if it is done right. People will not solo "almost exclusively" if the experience point gain per minute is significantly less and the loot is significantly less. Those people so dedicated to solo play that they will solo under those circumstances will never become "groupies" and the game benefits by throwing them a sop so they remain paying subscribers. And by giving true "groupies" a chance to log-on and play on days when they don't have time to group or expect too many interruptions. People that can productively play any day - even if they only have an hour - will stay paying subscribers longer than people that can only play once a week or once a month when they can block out 2-4 hours of uniterrupted time.

    • 2419 posts
    July 5, 2021 9:53 AM PDT

    Taichang said:

    My question is this:

    Given that the primary focus of the game is to get back to grouping and community, and really bring back that Everquest style game play where you have pullers, and tanks, and support, and healers. And given how much multi-boxing ruined Everquest 1 by allowing one player to play several characters thus destroying that. Allowing one person to monoplize content or "camps", and thus pushing out single players. And given also that as the community out grows lower level content, and then the player base in those areas no longer supports group play.

    And lastly, does Pantheon have any plans to punish and break up multi-boxers so that history does not repeat itself?

    Hyperbole much, that it was multi-boxing that ruined EQ1?

    I'm curious to find out just how often, across the year(s) that you played EQ1, that the presence of multi-boxer prevented you from engaging in some content.

    Also, I find this statement worded oddly "allowing one person to monopolize content, and thus pushing out single players. Did you mean to say that the presence of a multi-boxer meant that the multi-boxer was stopping a single person from joining that group or that you, as a single player, wanted to experience that content but a multi-boxer was already there. 

    And, lastly, would you have been as upset as you seem if you came across a 2 player group and they didn't want you to join?  Or a 3 player group?  Or even a 5 player group?  Each one tells you to bugger off so are you going to be equally upset they are monpolizing the content you want to experience at that given moment?


    This post was edited by Vandraad at July 5, 2021 9:55 AM PDT
    • 1584 posts
    July 5, 2021 12:40 PM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    Taichang said:

    My question is this:

    Given that the primary focus of the game is to get back to grouping and community, and really bring back that Everquest style game play where you have pullers, and tanks, and support, and healers. And given how much multi-boxing ruined Everquest 1 by allowing one player to play several characters thus destroying that. Allowing one person to monoplize content or "camps", and thus pushing out single players. And given also that as the community out grows lower level content, and then the player base in those areas no longer supports group play.

    And lastly, does Pantheon have any plans to punish and break up multi-boxers so that history does not repeat itself?

    Hyperbole much, that it was multi-boxing that ruined EQ1?

    I'm curious to find out just how often, across the year(s) that you played EQ1, that the presence of multi-boxer prevented you from engaging in some content.

    Also, I find this statement worded oddly "allowing one person to monopolize content, and thus pushing out single players. Did you mean to say that the presence of a multi-boxer meant that the multi-boxer was stopping a single person from joining that group or that you, as a single player, wanted to experience that content but a multi-boxer was already there. 

    And, lastly, would you have been as upset as you seem if you came across a 2 player group and they didn't want you to join?  Or a 3 player group?  Or even a 5 player group?  Each one tells you to bugger off so are you going to be equally upset they are monpolizing the content you want to experience at that given moment?

     

    If he is talking about the current TPS servers than it is wildly common, but this is also considering that the classes (all of them) are completely ovetuned, and makes the game as a whole much easier than it was when it first came out.  So with this in mind yes multiboxing can in eq current form can monlopolize current loot/content from others, but I don't see this being a big deal or as big as some people think due to if they truly make content that is truly challenging than their will be some content that could be to hard for most multiboxers to actually deal with and the group that are all playing as individuals would have a greater benefit than the multiboxer in this situations.


    This post was edited by Cealtric at July 5, 2021 12:41 PM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    July 5, 2021 1:12 PM PDT

    Riahuf22 said:

    If he is talking about the current TPS servers than it is wildly common, but this is also considering that the classes (all of them) are completely ovetuned, and makes the game as a whole much easier than it was when it first came out.  So with this in mind yes multiboxing can in eq current form can monlopolize current loot/content from others, but I don't see this being a big deal or as big as some people think due to if they truly make content that is truly challenging than their will be some content that could be to hard for most multiboxers to actually deal with and the group that are all playing as individuals would have a greater benefit than the multiboxer in this situations.

    I bolded the important part.  It isn't the multi-boxers in this case, it's the base game design that is the problem. The fact the classes are all completely overpowered is the problem.  So once again, what someone says is the problem, that of multi-boxing, isn't the actual problem but only a symptom of the underlying problem that is horrific terrible game design.