Multiing

[reed23]

All you extremists, I am very sure the Imms are not going to allow more than 1 or 2 multi's per IP address.  And for you who think that this is going to have a huge impact on PK, you are nuts.  Allowing people to play 2 or 3 per IP is not changing much, it is just legalizing what is already happening.

[Super Tacoman]

Or, be at least pretend to be discreet as per the current situation.

so im stuck soloing if i follow the rules while someone else is playing a 4 man using proxies, iphone, other tricks?  but since he is being discreet i guess its okay.

daniel made an excellent point too.  you cant even punish these people without hurting the game.  if some immortal catches them and abysses all their chars for a month for example, they will very likely just quit for the wipe.  they dont want to go back to just playing one character after they have had the power of 2 or 3 or whatever.  and when they quit it causes a chain reaction.  now their friends have less people to play with and they are more likely to quit or bring in bots of their own.

i really believe the best solution is to legalize 1 bot for each person.  then the cheaters can discreetly play 6 chars instead of 3 but at least i wont have to solo. 

[Hoss]

light pruning complete

[HapHazard]

I posted this once before, but I don't see it anymore so I'll say it again.  Is it feasible to tweak the very high end mobs/zones down some and reduce the max group size to 5 or 6?  With legendary characters and diverse rank purchases, a small group can already achieve the same now as a group twice it's size could 3-4 wipes ago.  How often are 10 man groups even used these days?  If the size of the group was reduced, it could put a damper on the amount of multiing that is already going on.  I doubt that 1 person who is botting several characters at a time would be attempting to do 2 seperate zones at once, and with groups being twice as easy to fill, the use of bots wouldn't be as needed.  This would also enable the more average players who choose not to zone outside their circle of friends to still be able to explore the top tier stuff.  Most of the game wouldn't even need to be modified to make this compromise, only the extremely challenging areas.  People may be more excited to explore things as well, knowing that things are actually possible on lesser numbers, not to mention the followers of the group could be more of a part of the exploration, rather than 7-9 people sitting idle while their leader reads room descriptions and tries keywords. I personally enjoy being in an 8-10 man group, but they are much harder to manage with people constantly AFKing unannounced, and having half as many groupies makes things much easier on a leader.  This would likely not be a "quick" fix because of the possible work that would need to be done to dumb down some mobs/zones, but now (and in the future, when there are possibly even less players) it could compensate for the lack of players without having to fill group slots with bots, scripts and more charmies.  Just an idea.

[btown]

Why hasn't Aristox posted on this matter?  I want to hear Aristox POV and that will likely help me decide what i think is best..  can we please get Aristox input?

[RaVaN]

  @Kragg /agree

  The very idea of this just wearies me.  The fact that botting was given any sense of legitimacy by an Overlord by even pretending to think it might be a idea worth listening too wearies me even more. Broken down:

  If you allow 1-2 multis you allow 10-100.  There is no line, just catering to those who have consistently broken the rules for years...in some cases have admitted it, which are some of the biggest supporters of doing so and catering to those who have always wished to break the rules and been too scared to or too stupid. 

  If you allow multis, you are allowing botting by virtue of the beast.  People will be running scripts and will be successful at it since now they can play with it in the open. 

  This will in turn lead to the zones just being overrun with bot armies meaning less gear/ranks for anyone not doing the same.

  By this time, legitimate players will have left...if they all don't leave as soon as this is allowed...further decimating the player base.  Not only that, there will be NO new players since the game will have moved into such an arcane point that only those on now will be able to play this game.

  Basically you get a dead game and faster than if you hadn't given this STUPID baptING TOPIC legitimacy.


  That being said, in order for this to every work certain things would have to be done to the game to make it even remotely viable.

#1.  Add Opt NOPK                   Now, no worries about policing bot armies.
#2.  Instance Zones                  Now people can run their bots armies to their heart's content.
#3.  Make all gear unlimited      People can gear up as many bot armies as they want
#4.  Remove Rent costs             Now people don't need to worry about maintaining bots armies so they can play whenever
#5.  Create bot scripts all can use    Keeps the playing field at least somewhat playable to new players/returning


  @Hoss

  "I would not want to implement another half-assed system into the game"(Hoss)
 

  Allowing multying is just another half-assed system without major in-game changes and you know this.

[Hoss]

@ravan: Lets get something straight before you drive too far down the path you are headed. I am not for or against what is being discussed in this thread, I am for having open discussion. There are no sacred cows in this sandbox, nothing should be 'off limits' to discuss as long as it pertains to the game. I appreciate your feedback on the topic, and trust me I will evaluate your wearies on this topic very closely.

[Aristox]

Well done Hoss.

Now we know who all the cheaters are: anyone that voted yes.

[Gnua]

Well done Hoss.

Now we know who all the cheaters are: anyone that voted yes.

If I were multiing, I would vote no to preserve my advantage over the simpletons who follow the rules and to make myself look like an upstanding citizen. Just like if I were running a weed racket, I would oppose the legalization of marijuana.

[corey]

I'm glad I logged into the forum today.

Every so often I feel like logging in and leveling a char for one reason or another. One of my pet peeves is inefficiency. I HATE waiting for health / etc, and this always ends up limiting me to playing whatever class is the most efficient at the time.

For me it would be more leveling / doing stuff on my own in the game world. I hate relying on others.

[Dagda]

@ravan - finally some payback for each and every one of your posts that have wearied the rest of us over the years.

If you allow 1-2 multis you allow 10-100.  There is no line

i dont see how you get to that.  why couldnt it be limited to 1 multi?  it should be no harder to limit it to 1 multi than it already is to limit it to 0.  and if you can limit it to one multi then the rest of your post is just nonsense.

How he gets this is that one of the requirements of this was set by Hoss.  He does not want the imms to be a police force having to enforce rules that are complex.  A simple, no multis rule is enforceable if you can catch a person at it.  A simple multis allowed is enforceable.  Saying 1-2 multis allowed isn't enforceable as your burden of proof becomes much higher.  It is either ALL or none.  I would prefer none and that people learn to group more and bring others to the game.

As far as the mercenaries idea, it would be complex to code but it would be much more useful than a charmie and much more standardized than a bot.  The issue with bots is that someone is beating you or losing to you based on their coding expertise (or borrowing the code from someone else), with a mercenary system you are all on the same playing field with either the good or poor coding expertise of the imm.  I would volunteer to do this, but 1) my coding is shit - that isn't my field 2) I don't have an IMM. 

Allowing multiing changes the game completely, in my opinion.  Mercenaries changes the game as well, but allows for less experienced and less knowledgeable players to have the tools to further their knowledge through exploration. 

[Jorake]

Could there really be tweaks done like that? From what i hear Blood Shoal is th ehardest zone in game atm, and has 2 HUGE ENORMOUS BIG fights that make (from what i hear!) cyan look like a cuddly box of kittens. Could fights like this really be scaled down if group sizes were lowered? I am all for the lowering of group sizes down to 7-8. Hell. My legend shaman can damn near solo any zone a 4-5man group can. So why not.

I also am all for the multing and iI voted Yes. I did this for reasons stated above. When leveling up if you are a slow leveler or you don't have that much game knowledge to where you can just ZOOM through levels solo on whatever class you play like alot of the veteran players can, then you are hindered for sure by health regen, shitty skills, bad exp area's etc. But the situation comes in, if im allowed to play 2 characters, what stops me from playing 3? What stops me from playing 4, and just pretending that my other OTHER bot is a real dude? I think it's something that should be tested. Maybe for the remainder of this wipe. Since it seems to be almost over. Lets test multing out for the rest of this wipe and see how it goes.

[Super Tacoman]

How he gets this is that one of the requirements of this was set by Hoss.  He does not want the imms to be a police force having to enforce rules that are complex.  A simple, no multis rule is enforceable if you can catch a person at it.  A simple multis allowed is enforceable.  Saying 1-2 multis allowed isn't enforceable as your burden of proof becomes much higher.  It is either ALL or none.  I would prefer none and that people learn to group more and bring others to the game.

allow 1 multi per person.  then look at a group.  count how many people in the group have the same IP#.  if you get to 3, that is too many.  how complicated is that?

if you think the immortals wont be able to tell who is using too many characters because of the use of proxy servers and other such tricks, how is that any different from now?

[Dagda]

How he gets this is that one of the requirements of this was set by Hoss.  He does not want the imms to be a police force having to enforce rules that are complex.  A simple, no multis rule is enforceable if you can catch a person at it.  A simple multis allowed is enforceable.  Saying 1-2 multis allowed isn't enforceable as your burden of proof becomes much higher.  It is either ALL or none.  I would prefer none and that people learn to group more and bring others to the game.

allow 1 multi per person.  then look at a group.  count how many people in the group have the same IP#.  if you get to 3, that is too many.  how complicated is that?

if you think the immortals wont be able to tell who is using too many characters because of the use of proxy servers and other such tricks, how is that any different from now?

How does it help to allow it, when the folks who believe they can get away with it will still use the same methods to get away with it?  Build a better mousetrap and catch those who cheat.  Don't require everyone else to stoop to their level.  Believe me, the mousetrap can be built, it just needs the right engineer.

[Cyren]

after re-reading things in this thread i see things about "wishing the gods would come down hard on people who break the rules" and "no bots, punish people severely".

often times i log on and see that there are 6-7 people online. at peak times there might be 40 at the absolute maximum. if you were to stand by these statements, that 40 people maximum would probably drop to 30, and instead of 6-7 in my evening (australia ftw) there would probably be 3-4. say you punish some playing group of about 4 people, that has 2 people in it that play 2 characters each. this playing group may have a total of 6 active characters - 4 of which are now gone. all of these people quit playing. who does this benefit? the answer is noone. i would suggest that anyone who promotes the "go all medieval on their asses" mentality does not have this games best interests at heart, and either has their own self serving agenda or lacks the foresight to understand the consequences that an all out witch hunt would have.

Yes, i have a self serving agenda. I don't want to learn to make a bot

I've seen you use bots very effectively, and I know that your bots have helped you explore a lot of zones solo. I've benefitted from your exploration when  you bring a group back to the zone. I really don't have a gripe against people using bots to extend their solo zoning or exploring.

What I have angst about is people using bot armies to pk. I know you say they are useless, etc etc, but 2 people with 2 bots is going to steamroll smaller groups too easily. Clearly that can be done now, but it requires 4 players or cheating.

I would be much more comfortable about allowing multis if bots are absolutely banned from pk, or possibly lowering group limits to 5, reworking zone balance etc, and create a situation where there are more frequently 5 person groups with 5 real people able to stand up to 1 or 2 players with bots in the slots.