Make multiboxing explicitly against TOS please!

[bb]

FIrst of all let me preface that I'm super excited about the game!

I come from Eve online background and let me tell you multiboxing is an absolute cancer for the game and ruins the fun for everyone else and messes up the economy. Please make it against ToS, the following youtuber is promoting multiboxing based on the fact it's not explicitly against ToS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0mK0s1dCNA

Reasons:
- negatively impacts economy, as multiboxing players can acquire more resources, gain a gold lead and reduce the prices of items on the market
- negatively impacts game design, as a player can use multiple characters to circumvent the need to interact with other players, in activities that require cooperation
- negatively impacts pvp game design, as secondary characters can be used for scouting pvp areas
- will negatively impact leaderboards once player to player trading becomes available, as multiple characters can pool resources to fund a single main to boost it up the ladder
- Regardless of how reliably it can be detected, if they don't specify it in the ToS, and they find a reliable method to detect it later, they will not be able to employ it because it was not against ToS from the getgo, and players will have already invested resources in it. This is a long term game, and a lesson that should be learned from other MMOs that could not backpedal on ToS, such as Eve online, which is the example I'm most familiar with.
- because of the above advantages, it turns Brighter Shores into a pay to win game, since you need to pay for subs for your secondary accounts

Thank you!
- An eager player

[Freya Crescent]

Originally posted by devlos:

But who does multi-boxing affect? Playing for leaderboards is dumb , only for the select few that have nothing better to do in their life and have nothing going on either. If someone essentially wants to have 3 instances at once for nothing else then a XP farm , i guess feel free.

Since it's a player-run economy with player-to-player trading, it affects every player who engages with that economy... and AFAIK there's been no mention of an 'ironman' mode that doesn't have the ability to trade.

If a single player can, at the click of a single button through multi-boxing, perform the same task across 20+ characters then any item or value produced through that action will decrease in value at 20x the normal rate. This is further exacerbated by how small the game is.

The forums haven't been super active this close to launch so lets say we get... 1000 (paid/premium/member) players at launch. Let's say that 1% (10) of those players decide to multibox 20 accounts at once. There are now 10 players who are using 200 characters in a game with 1,000 (+190 'fake' characters) performing a single task... let's say cutting wood. That's nearly 20% of all players doing a single, item-producing task. The other 80% is mostly doing a different skill or something else.

Now, any skill that uses that wood (We know Carpentry, possibly others) can buy up thousands of wood supplies on the cheap. Yay! Easy levels! ... however, the resulting item is worthless... so now your only doing Carpentry because Skill Level Number Go Up... and from the launch trailer, we know skills go to AT LEAST 300. So a completionist player is going to sit here and make thousands and thousands of tables or boxes or whatever for no other reason than "it's a skill I need to finish" and none of it serves any purpose. Just more tables for the landfill.

Without the 200 additional multiboxed accounts, the skill has more depth. "Well, tables are easy to make, but if I make fishing spears I can sell them for a return of profit, but I shouldn't make too many. If I go and get more of this other wood along the way, I can make wooden shields instead. That wood is expensive, but if I train my Woodcutting I can get the wood myself ..." etc etc. All things you didn't need to consider when Multiboxed To Hell-Oak only cost a couple coins each.

[MereToad]

Yes please

[Be Blue ! 👌]

Originally posted by Freya Crescent:

Originally posted by devlos:

But who does multi-boxing affect? Playing for leaderboards is dumb , only for the select few that have nothing better to do in their life and have nothing going on either. If someone essentially wants to have 3 instances at once for nothing else then a XP farm , i guess feel free.

Since it's a player-run economy with player-to-player trading, it affects every player who engages with that economy... and AFAIK there's been no mention of an 'ironman' mode that doesn't have the ability to trade.

If a single player can, at the click of a single button through multi-boxing, perform the same task across 20+ characters then any item or value produced through that action will decrease in value at 20x the normal rate. This is further exacerbated by how small the game is.

The forums haven't been super active this close to launch so lets say we get... 1000 (paid/premium/member) players at launch. Let's say that 1% (10) of those players decide to multibox 20 accounts at once. There are now 10 players who are using 200 characters in a game with 1,000 (+190 'fake' characters) performing a single task... let's say cutting wood. That's nearly 20% of all players doing a single, item-producing task. The other 80% is mostly doing a different skill or something else.

Now, any skill that uses that wood (We know Carpentry, possibly others) can buy up thousands of wood supplies on the cheap. Yay! Easy levels! ... however, the resulting item is worthless... so now your only doing Carpentry because Skill Level Number Go Up... and from the launch trailer, we know skills go to AT LEAST 300. So a completionist player is going to sit here and make thousands and thousands of tables or boxes or whatever for no other reason than "it's a skill I need to finish" and none of it serves any purpose. Just more tables for the landfill.

Without the 200 additional multiboxed accounts, the skill has more depth. "Well, tables are easy to make, but if I make fishing spears I can sell them for a return of profit, but I shouldn't make too many. If I go and get more of this other wood along the way, I can make wooden shields instead. That wood is expensive, but if I train my Woodcutting I can get the wood myself ..." etc etc. All things you didn't need to consider when Multiboxed To Hell-Oak only cost a couple coins each.

Sounds like this guy gave us some closed beta info. Rush fishing spears and wooden shields for initial money

[SunsetAmethyst]

+1

[GonthorianDX]

+1

[Gamefreak]

Yeah, never been a fan of games allowing it. If you can't physically run three accounts on three different computers with three mice and three keyboards, then you shouldn't be allowed to have software bypass all of that to get an advantage.

[deleted_user]

Originally posted by bb:

multiboxing

You may wish to add a bit of clarification in your opening post, so that the two very different definitions of multiboxing don't get further confused by readers/commenters in your thread.

To some MMO players (such as myself and many other old WoW players) multiboxing is a type of cheating where all actions performed on a single game client are automatically replicated via software/macro to all other open clients. Instead, MMO players like me would refer to what you're wanting to discuss as multilogging, which is manually controlling multiple game clients one at a time.

The former is bannable in just about every MMO, whereas the latter is generally allowed in MMOs, and is what happens in EVE Online, RuneScape, etc.

Anyway, you may be happy to know that the Gowers made multilogging against the rules for RuneScape back in the day: https://i.imgur.com/eYbUjNd.png (screenshot of said rule from a photograph of the "official" RuneScape handbook from 2006)

Transcribed just in case:

Rule 8: No Multiple Log-In
You may create more than one RuneScape account, but if you do, you may not log in to more than one account at any time, and the characters must not interact with each other in any way. This includes "drop trading", or any other method of item transfer.

Perhaps their sentiments on the matter won't have changed, but we'll have to wait and see. So far, there is no mention of this in the rules: https://www.brightershores.com/rules

[bb]

Originally posted by deleted_user:

Originally posted by bb:

multiboxing

You may wish to add a bit of clarification in your opening post, so that the two very different definitions of multiboxing don't get further confused by readers/commenters in your thread.

To some MMO players (such as myself and many other old WoW players) multiboxing is a type of cheating where all actions performed on a single game client are automatically replicated via software/macro to all other open clients. Instead, MMO players like me would refer to what you're wanting to discuss as multilogging, which is manually controlling multiple game clients one at a time.

The former is bannable in just about every MMO, whereas the latter is generally allowed in MMOs, and is what happens in EVE Online, RuneScape, etc.

Anyway, you may be happy to know that the Gowers made multilogging against the rules for RuneScape back in the day: https://i.imgur.com/eYbUjNd.png (screenshot of said rule from a photograph of the "official" RuneScape handbook from 2006)

Transcribed just in case:

Rule 8: No Multiple Log-In
You may create more than one RuneScape account, but if you do, you may not log in to more than one account at any time, and the characters must not interact with each other in any way. This includes "drop trading", or any other method of item transfer.

Perhaps their sentiments on the matter won't have changed, but we'll have to wait and see. So far, there is no mention of this in the rules: https://www.brightershores.com/rules

I think what you are describing is called input broadcasting. Multiboxing literally means using multiple boxes (PCs). Nowhere in the name does it imply using special software. Hence why, although I understand input broadcasting might have been called simply multiboxing in wow as a shorthand name, I do not wish to propagate that misnomer. In Eve it does not imply using special software.

That is just my stance, I understand you may not agree with this point.

That being said, was not aware of the rule in Runescape, glad to hear there is a precedent, thank you for pointing it out.

[deleted_user]

Originally posted by bb:

That being said, was not aware of the rule in Runescape, glad to hear there is a precedent, thank you for pointing it out.

Yup. However, I forgot until just now that it's worth pointing out the multilogging rule was changed in around 2014, after the Gowers left Jagex, to this: https://legal.jagex.com/readme/rules/rules-of-runescape#multiple-logging-in

Multiple Logging-In
You are free to create as many accounts as you like, and you are welcome to trade between your accounts just as you would with any other player - you can log into two accounts at the same time to do this if you wish.

That's when it became allowed, and things pretty much snowballed into the problems we see today on both RS3 and OSRS.

Personally, I'm on the fence about the matter, because I do like having at least one alt when/if allowed. It's just when things get absolutely mad that I'm against it, like the folks with double-digit clients open.

[bb]

Originally posted by deleted_user:

Originally posted by bb:

That being said, was not aware of the rule in Runescape, glad to hear there is a precedent, thank you for pointing it out.

Yup. However, I forgot until just now that it's worth pointing out the multilogging rule was changed in around 2014, after the Gowers left Jagex, to this: https://legal.jagex.com/readme/rules/rules-of-runescape#multiple-logging-in

Multiple Logging-In
You are free to create as many accounts as you like, and you are welcome to trade between your accounts just as you would with any other player - you can log into two accounts at the same time to do this if you wish.

That's when it became allowed, and things pretty much snowballed into the problems we see today on both RS3 and OSRS.

Personally, I'm on the fence about the matter, because I do like having at least one alt when/if allowed. It's just when things get absolutely mad that I'm against it, like the folks with double-digit clients open.

Yeah, the problem with that rule is the more accounts you have, the easier it is to create even more accounts, if you have 20 accounts, they can easily farm up enough resources to fund a 21st account (might even be gold, and if bonds become a thing, it will fund the subscription for the 21st account). This is not a healthy direction for a game, as this becomes an optimal strat that everyone that enjoys playing somewhat optimally is forced to take.

It is not fun, and if legitimized, serves as a cruch for game design issues (like having to rely on multiboxing for scouting purposes in pvp, instead of the game offering you a legitimate way to do it, with an in-game feature), or relying on a friend/guildmate to do it, encouraging cooperation.

Yeah, that's another point, it discourages cooperation, something that goes against the spirit of an mmo.

[Xortrox]

I think there's an even more important distinction to make here, as the term "multiboxing" itself is very gray area. Click mirroring would be considered macroing while manual inputs to separate clients would not, so the typical WoW multiboxing would probably be against ToS by nature of being macroing. However playing many accounts in parallel with manual and legit inputs is how I would personally play.

[侍Kage]

there will be people who will run scripts day 1, i wonder if they have the same tech as osrs to detect these players.

[bb]

Originally posted by Xortrox:

I think there's an even more important distinction to make here, as the term "multiboxing" itself is very gray area. Click mirroring would be considered macroing while manual inputs to separate clients would not, so the typical WoW multiboxing would probably be against ToS by nature of being macroing. However playing many accounts in parallel with manual and legit inputs is how I would personally play.

Yes, this needs to be against ToS, as it is an optimal strat that pidgeonholes players and is a cruch for game design. It's been made obvious in other games why allowing this is bad, even with legitimate inputs.

[Be Blue ! 👌]

Originally posted by bb:

Originally posted by Xortrox:

I think there's an even more important distinction to make here, as the term "multiboxing" itself is very gray area. Click mirroring would be considered macroing while manual inputs to separate clients would not, so the typical WoW multiboxing would probably be against ToS by nature of being macroing. However playing many accounts in parallel with manual and legit inputs is how I would personally play.

Yes, this needs to be against ToS, as it is an optimal strat that pidgeonholes players and is a cruch for game design. It's been made obvious in other games why allowing this is bad, even with legitimate inputs.

It doesnt NEED to be, you WANT it to be. The silent majority DGAF as this changes nothing for 99.99% of players who just play a game to have fun and not sweat over some numbers that wont change their life

[bb]

Originally posted by Be Blue ! 👌:

Originally posted by bb:

Yes, this needs to be against ToS, as it is an optimal strat that pidgeonholes players and is a cruch for game design. It's been made obvious in other games why allowing this is bad, even with legitimate inputs.

It doesnt NEED to be, you WANT it to be. The silent majority DGAF as this changes nothing for 99.99% of players who just play a game to have fun and not sweat over some numbers that wont change their life

Calm down my man, most of the participants in this thread both here and on reddit are agreeing with this. If you want unfair advantages, perhaps try eve online.