No more multiboxing???

[Dude]

Great. I'd first and foremost like to thank the people who thought this one up. </sarcasm>

Why do people mutibox? To create stacks so that they can more effectively kill/level. Now that the ability for me to back myself up, I'm forced to try and find people who can stack in places like the GY and the new Terranite mines. I, for one had 1 alt that tagged along to give me assistance as required. I have always been AK. I have never been a problem on the server, and yet now I cannot play effectively. Expecially given that I play evenings in California when there are far fewer people on....

Bad rule!

[Cotillion]

Great. I'd first and foremost like to thank the people who thought this one up. </sarcasm>

Why do people mutibox? To create stacks so that they can more effectively kill/level. Now that the ability for me to back myself up, I'm forced to try and find people who can stack in places like the GY and the new Terranite mines. I, for one had 1 alt that tagged along to give me assistance as required. I have always been AK. I have never been a problem on the server, and yet now I cannot play effectively. Expecially given that I play evenings in California when there are far fewer people on....

Bad rule!

-1 Dude
+1 Rule

[mocha]

+1 Dude
-1 Rule

[Dude]

-1 Dooood
+1 Rule

FYP

[Acegi]

From what I have gathered from IRC, there's an IP check (and proxy scanner) that can be used to show if someone is using the same IP address so the same internet connection. This doesn't determine definitively if someone is multiboxing. It's up to the GMs to decide on if someone is multiboxing.

What if a sibling (or more) and I decide to play TMW at the same time.
My sibling plays by stacking with someone in Australia.
Another sibling plays by stacking with someone else in France.
I'm in a stack with someone in Canada in a different area maybe same map maybe not.

This is a likely scenario that could be misconstrued as multiboxing. Do the GM trust that the players are siblings/friends in the same house? Does a GM/Dev/Admin NEED to know that this person is related? Should you have to reveal private information such as having a younger sister/brothers?

There is no way of knowing for certain unless GMs start making house calls. I trust the GMs I know and for the most part the GMs have been chosen by the players. This doesn't mean I want them to know about my family.

Bringing up the issue of privacy as well as being wrongly accused and judged on a whim. People are weird and behave weirdly. The only way to know if players are multiboxing for real would be to visit them in real life, in person which is frankly impossible.

[Reid]

that work for 1 map? or for every map?

[Dude]

reid, based on the information I've been able to glean thus far:

A player may not have more than 1 character fighting/maging/healing at one time regardless of map.

A player can have any many characters logged in, just so long as only 1 is fighting/maging/healing.

GMs can check the IP of any chars to determine who is playing from the same location....how they will determine true multiboxing (versus families who play toegether, etc) and/or be able to check multiple chars spead accross multiple maps has yet to be determined.

[Reid]

Why they do that? It coast a lot for creat a multiboxing chars, more than one char.

[yaypunkrock]

So is TMW no longer a family game?

[mocha]

I'm interested in learning the reasoning behind this rule from the GMs/developers who decided to go forward with it. In my opinion, implementing rules that affect the dedicated player base is not a good way to grow a player base for a game (especially an open source game with roughly 100 players). Once a player reaches the higher levels there's basically two reasons to continue playing: reaching level 99 and chatting with friends. The latter is not affected by the new rule. So I'm presuming the new rule is just to increase the difficultly for the dedicated players who make up the core of this game to reach level 99. Seems like we're pissing off many to appease a few.

[Cotillion]

I'm interested in learning the reasoning behind this rule from the GMs/developers who decided to go forward with it. In my opinion, implementing rules that affect the dedicated player base is not a good way to grow a player base for a game (especially an open source game with roughly 100 players). Once a player reaches the higher levels there's basically two reasons to continue playing: reaching level 99 and chatting with friends. The latter is not affected by the new rule. So I'm presuming the new rule is just to increase the difficultly for the dedicated players who make up the core of this game to reach level 99. Seems like we're pissing off many to appease a few.

Bow/speed bug - fixed. Allowed leveling to fast
Skull room - nerfed. Allowed leveling to fast
Other stack rooms (mines, sea slimes) - nerfed. Allowed leveling to fast

Multiboxing (finally nerfed)

Few complain these were fixed. But they are loud.
Good work devs

[Dude]

Bow/speed bug - fixed. Allowed leveling to fast
Skull room - nerfed. Allowed leveling to fast
Other stack rooms (mines, sea slimes) - nerfed. Allowed leveling to fast

Multiboxing (finally nerfed)

Few complain these were fixed. But they are loud.
Good work devs

Ok, a bug fix is one thing. Attempting to balance areas is ok.....But disallowing multiboxing does not seem to correspond to the earlier measures. How does this slow leveling when I can still get 10-15 people to stack in the GY if I play during the day?

[Arphetic]

So I can no longer convince my housemates to play this game....

[AnonDuck]

From a development standpoint, multiboxing has to end. It is creating a huge amount of money for a small group of players (hence the hosed economy), and making it very hard for an honest player to get ahead.

First, lets define multiboxing clearly in this context: One human using more than one character at a time in such a way as to gain a disproportionate advantage in gameplay.

For example:
One player with a stack of 4+ characters all performing the same actions, completely dominating a given spawn point. A player fighting in a party while running a second automated client configured to heal party members with magic when their HP gets low. Automated mages inside stacks of clones(So they are untargetable) in PvP areas to zap anyone else who comes near the spawn point. Multiple automated clones in different locations to enhance one's resource gathering ability.

Yes these things happen and are becoming increasingly more common, as I'm sure the GMs can confirm. Multiple characters from one human combined with heavy automation is quite clearly an unbalancing and unfair advantage to a player.

Really, the problem is with heavy automation - automated grinding with logic to alert the AFK user when a GM is trying to administer a turing test. There is absolutely no way to enforce a rule against automation, it would end up being an arms race. The best we can hope to do is significantly lessen the damage such automation causes by limiting the number of automated characters a user can run at once.

To that end, I have added the @ipcheck command to the server. When used on a character, this command will show all other characters currently online from that IP address. Using this tool and their observational abilities, GMs should be able to fairly reliably enforce a "No Multiboxing" rule. There are also technical measures being put in place to prevent open proxies and TOR exit nodes from connecting to the server.

I am fully aware that this rule is not 100% enforceable, but neither is "No AFK activity". To give my classic example, I have modified a client to pipe chat to my mobile phone via SMS. Should we get rid of the "No AFK activity" rule just because of that? Of course not! GMs need permission to ban the people that they *can* catch breaking the rules.

This fairly well sums it up. I'd like to note that some of the recent balance changes (raising of prices, lowering of drop values, etc) were influenced by the multiboxers. With this rule in place we will be able to fairly balance the game for players that actually want to play, instead of those trying to exploit the system to gain an advantage over other players.

I realise this won't stop the moaning and groaning from those intent on gaining an advantage, but I'd at least hope that people can understand the rationale behind this. Without this rule the game would degenerate in to a contest about who has the biggest computer(to run more clients), and the most advanced automation.. leaving people who just want to install the game and play normally out of luck.

[yourmistakes]

i am actually in full support of this . . the multiboxers were the only ones able to put a real challenge up in the terranite cave.