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Update regarding Multiboxing and input automation

First post First post First post
Author
Rise Asahina
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#1061 - 2014-11-26 06:16:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Rise Asahina
As a multi-boxing miner, I use ISBoxer primarily for window management and to remove some of the tedium from the process. For example: Making all of my miners launch jet-cans simultaneously, targeting a broadcast target at once, or activating all of my hardeners and mining lasers.

Most of these things can be done almost as easily with VideoFX controls and some extra clicking, it's just a nuisance making a more complex UI layout and clicking a bunch more.

That said, it has me seriously considering dropping my mining fleet subscriptions. Not because I think having to click 10 times instead of 1 is so much more unbearable, but because I'm uncomfortable with the hypocritical line in the sand CCP is drawing.

The universal argument against ISBoxer seems to come down to this: "It's unfair to other players."

Well, how is it unfair? "Because you can control so many things at once! You have an advantage over me because I only have one account!"

Of course I do. CCP gave me permission to have an advantage over you when they gave me permission to have more than one account. (Which they actively promote with Power of 2 and other promotions.)

What CCP has said, by banning multiplexing but not multiboxing, is that "It's totally fine for you to have an advantage over another player. We just want to arbitrarily limit that by the amount of tedium you're willing to endure, or the speed of your reactions, to determine how big that advantage is."

Honestly - I would prefer they just quit straddling the fence and decide "how much advantage is too much?" Is it 20 accounts? 10? 2? Pick a number and stick with it, or ban multiboxing altogether. But this notion of "you can have an advantage but only as much of one as your sanity and/or reaction time can stand because we force needless tedium" is just hypocritical in my opinion. As someone pointed out earlier, mining is already suicidally boring and awful. And now a percentage of the playerbase is being demonized by CCP employees (check out Falcon's comments on reddit) for finding a way to make their sub-par system interesting.

So which is it? Is having an advantage or being "pay to win" okay or isn't it? If it's okay, at what point is it "too much of an advantage"? Because multiplexing isn't the problem. Your unwillingness to draw a line in the sand is.
Pick a side, CCP.

And to those that keep bringing this up as if it's relevant, I have 9 accounts. None have ever been plexed. I pay the money to CCP because I don't mine enough to be a quadrillionairre. I just do it because I found learning ISBoxer fun and tinkering with it to make it do what I wanted an EVE provided an interesting diversion.
soomon
Duty. Joint Harvesting
Brave United
#1062 - 2014-11-26 06:17:17 UTC
THANKS CCP !!!

SmileSmileSmile
Steppa Musana
Doomheim
#1063 - 2014-11-26 06:20:29 UTC  |  Edited by: Steppa Musana
bleh nevermind.
Sheffsam
Doomheim
#1064 - 2014-11-26 06:21:30 UTC
Jeanette Leon wrote:
Brutus Le'montac wrote:
Kouga Pegasus wrote:
Brutus Le'montac wrote:
are logitech keyboards with macro keys now also prohibited ( if i use the 1 or more of the 18 macro keys)?

if so please send me the info i need to claim 150$ from ccp for a new keybord, or send me a gamer keyboard that does not have macro keys ccp, tyvm in advance.



This includes, but isn’t limited to:

• Activation and control of ships and modules


SAME QUESTION HELLOO CCPP i am asking tooooo



aslong as i use it for 1 client only, to activate all my hardners for example it isnt broadcasting to multiple clients so should be allowed?

its so nice that ccp i so clear about this, instead off dropping 1 long list of should and shouldnts, and then withdraw in the dark, oow wait, they are doing just that aint they....



With a two strike permaban policy I'd surely appreciate some clarification on that aswell


Yeah, I know a bunch of people are saying it's OK, but it would be nice if we could get a response to this in clear terms from a CCP source. I don't really fancy risking a 30day ban because I used a programmable mouse button.
Doc Fury
Furious Enterprises
#1065 - 2014-11-26 06:24:14 UTC
Steppa Musana wrote:
To those celebrating the death of the one-man mining fleets, I want you to know there isn't a single solo miner in my systems of operation that is happy about this.

As a token of appreciation to the regular miners in these systems (that don't F with my fleet), I offer them a chunk of my income when they are on-grid, to compensate for the lack of available mats.
I also offer the newer players SRP when they are ganked.
When gankers come my mining fleet turns into an ECM and RR fleet, and so there are no resident gankers in our area as as result.

When I pack up my bags these miners will lose income, be hurt harder by ganks, and have no one there to keep the gankers away if they choose to target our systems.

I want you to know there isn't a single solo miner in my systems of operation that is happy about that. So whatever CCP is trying to help, they aren't helping any of us over here! You're going to kill a big part of our community here, because it centers around me. Arrogant but true. Just like a great FC or alliance leader can make or break an entire group, the same it is for us.


Can I haz your stuffz?



There's a million angry citizens looking down their tubes..at me.

Destiny Corrupted
Deadly Viper Kitten Mitten Sewing Company
Senpai's Afterschool Anime and Gaming Club
#1066 - 2014-11-26 06:25:25 UTC
There's literally no way for them to detect people using mouse/keyboard drivers to bind multiple key presses to one button. None.

I wrote some true EVE stories! And no, they're not of the generic "my 0.0 alliance had lots of 0.0 fleets and took a lot of 0.0 space" sort. Check them out here:

https://truestories.eveonline.com/users/2074-destiny-corrupted

Bloody Slave
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#1067 - 2014-11-26 06:25:53 UTC
Systimus wrote:
I use isboxer to mine with 4 accounts. Never have pvp'd with it. I don't use constantly but might use it to activate auto pilot or to dock. If I'm reading this correctly, this action with be banned . So no point in having 4 accounts so might as well cancel 3 of them.

Elite dangerous is out soon. Maybe cancel all 4 and have a go at that instead.


And you will go mine, auto pilot and never PvP in Elite Dangerous with 4 or more accounts as well?

EVE is not here for 12 years without a reason. Go watch "This is EVE" and try to understand why.

@CCP: This is the best Christmas gift I got in 9 years playing. I will spread the word with some of my old mates that left, thank you!

If your balls are hurt and bleeding don't sit in a pool full of piranhas (note to myself: don't complain in GD)

Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#1068 - 2014-11-26 06:28:49 UTC
Nolak Ataru wrote:
I would like to request that CCP consider allowing Broadcasting to be used to update skillqueues, whether it be adding skills to the queue via broadcasting throughout, or only allowing one to hit "Accept" at the very end of manually-adding skills to the queue.


Well lets see, will it make it more efficient for players to acquire skill points...is it a third party software? Yes, and yes. Then no. Roll

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#1069 - 2014-11-26 06:31:43 UTC
Destiny Corrupted wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Incursions and WH site runners should be able to reasonably solo all of their content as well by this logic. We've had a double standard for a while, and while it wasn't linked to the number of people it WAS linked to the number of clients.

All of there activities that could be multiboxed will be losing efficiency, but if other activities have a bar set in a place where multiple people are needed to accomplish a task then that means there is room in the game for it and no reason to homogenize effort or player count requirements.

Once again:

- Incursions and Sleepers are not kill triggers, and are already done solo by single players with alts.
- No other activity gains efficiency from multiboxing. The only thing that multiboxing does for other activities is decrease the effort of input required to conduct them. Meanwhile, suicide-ganking will suffer an actual efficiency loss, due to the necessity for more accounts.

The broad claim that no other activities gain efficiency from multiboxing I have great issue believing. Mainly because of your failure to recognize that the reduction of inputs is an efficiency increase in that it eliminates any input lag accross clients and ensures that each client is fully contributing to whatever task is being done from the moment the player instructs the first client to engage.

Also, as stated the kill trigger is irrelevant in determining if an activity will suffer loss. It can either be done as fast as now or it can't and it's a hard sell that 10 clients in combat won't suffer slower completion times without imput broadcasting.
Rain6637
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#1070 - 2014-11-26 06:33:06 UTC
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#1071 - 2014-11-26 06:35:51 UTC
Nolak Ataru wrote:
Mike Azariah wrote:
Last point. There is, here, a warning of a rule change coming. I have yet to see any salient argument except for people warning of their leaving, which is to be expected. Multiboxing and simultaneity of commands has lessened our game, not made it better, and this change is long overdue. It may cause some to go and take their 'x' accounts with them. The PEOPLE will be missed but not what they were doing.


Counter-point: I have yet to see any salient argument as to why it should be banned besides "muh ice/minerals", "muh freighter afk piloting with 20b of stuff" and last but not least, "muh PLEX".



You keep ignoring the elephant in the room. You are using a 3rd party software to acquire more in game resources than a player not using said 3rd party software...even if they multibox.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Destiny Corrupted
Deadly Viper Kitten Mitten Sewing Company
Senpai's Afterschool Anime and Gaming Club
#1072 - 2014-11-26 06:37:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Destiny Corrupted
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
The broad claim that no other activities gain efficiency from multiboxing I have great issue believing. Mainly because of your failure to recognize that the reduction of inputs is an efficiency increase in that it eliminates any input lag accross clients and ensures that each client is fully contributing to whatever task is being done from the moment the player instructs the first client to engage.

Also, as stated the kill trigger is irrelevant in determining if an activity will suffer loss. It can either be done as fast as now or it can't and it's a hard sell that 10 clients in combat won't suffer slower completion times without imput broadcasting.

Let me rephrase that a little bit.

Yes, you do suffer an efficiency loss in other activities. But in comparison to having to deal with CONCORD during a suicide-gank, it's so minor that it's practically meaningless. Does the extra second it takes you to switch between accounts make a difference in how much money you make using 3-minute-duration strip miners, or when you're shooting an NPC that takes 3 minutes of focused firepower from a dozen ships to die? Yes, it does, to the tune of half a percentage point.

For a suicide-ganker, it would be the difference between using 10 ships, and 15.

I wrote some true EVE stories! And no, they're not of the generic "my 0.0 alliance had lots of 0.0 fleets and took a lot of 0.0 space" sort. Check them out here:

https://truestories.eveonline.com/users/2074-destiny-corrupted

Captain StringfellowHawk
Forsaken Reavers
#1073 - 2014-11-26 06:38:11 UTC
Suffer short term losses of a Botting community er "Broadcasting" community.. to appease the Actual Playing community. Best Holiday present Ever. I will be glad to see the reduction of Bot-aspirant Behavior as CODE. would put it. Watch actual pilots moving ships more on their own instead of mass undocking 20 Miners or Cruisers at once. I much enjoyed the old days before ISboxer fully became a thing in EVE where you faught actual players not just clones upon clones. I have no problems with people using ISboxer to neaten up the monitors they use and for quick switching between screens. But I do hold issue with them piloting them all at once. Activating hardeners all at once, clearing out Belts all at once, or Destroying a fleet single handedly with their own private army.

Do not get me wrong, I am hella impressed with the skill it takes behind ISboxer armies fighting Lag and everything else to fully pull off some of those amazing kills. but I will not miss it
sniperskitz
Claws Inc
#1074 - 2014-11-26 06:40:54 UTC
Jita spam ban when?

Also to everyone saying impossible to detect hardware macros and all the else, they will be looking at commands sent to server, if they are too fast and consistent it will be monitored and reviewed.

Just wait for ISBoxer to have a delayed broadcast option
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#1075 - 2014-11-26 06:43:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Teckos Pech
Systimus wrote:
I use isboxer to mine with 4 accounts. Never have pvp'd with it. I don't use constantly but might use it to activate auto pilot or to dock. If I'm reading this correctly, this action with be banned . So no point in having 4 accounts so might as well cancel 3 of them.

Elite dangerous is out soon. Maybe cancel all 4 and have a go at that instead.


My God...it is that hard to turn on your mining lasers across 4 accounts (or 3 if one is a hauler/booster/etc.)? Seriously? If so, then this really is the wrong game for you. Roll

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

La Doktoro
Doomheim
#1076 - 2014-11-26 06:44:14 UTC  |  Edited by: La Doktoro
Shrug. Honestly in my opinionI don't see much changing.

I mostly use isboxer for the video FX features and windows layouts. so in theory i could easily switch to something like https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=246157&find=unread if they did completely ban isboxer


It took me all of hour maybe to switch things tonight to be legit in two different ways one without isboxer and one with

First opinion you can use logitech or whatever software with a gaming pad or keyboard with programmable keys.

example I could of easily set it so 1st time i hit g3 button button on my logitech keyboard it sends as Command to switch to Window 1 + F1 next press switch to Window2 + F1 and on through the list. I could easily press the key 10 times in next to no time. 10 clients 10 key presses it's legal.

the command to switch the windows is happening on your machine not in game and not affecting the in game actions so its legal in my opinion but I can see some fighting the point.

Downsides This means setting up a ton of hot keys but still easy enough.
if you have one of your guys parked(afk cloaking) or not logged in you need to either modify the list or risk uncloaking or have wasted keystrokes.

Second option isboxer, I can make a round robin key with a action target group. each time I press the button it sends my desired key stroke to one character in the group until its sent it to all of them. 10 characters 10 key presses all legit

advantage if a character slot isn't actually running it won't try to send a keystroke to that character. if i want to park them (afk cloaking) somewhere changing the group membership takes next to no time.


Targeting I have always done manually too unreliable im my opinion to automate

I know in logitech you can set a button to ctrl + left MB click at a given screen coordinate so also setup your broadcast windows i the same paces. 10 button pushes 10 locked targets in what 1-2 seconds ?

I expect you can do the same with other vendors software also.

isboxer I can do this several different ways I would prolly go where do like before just add the Video Fx feature

just means it opens a little video fx(think video feed of a given size) around current mouse location so i can see where my mouse is on that character screen click and it sends a ctrl left click 10 key presses and 10 left clicks 10 locked targets
with broadcast windows again you can easily lock targets in a nominal amount of time.

it wouldn't be a pure 100% alpha strike like you can with broadcast targeting however the time difference will be for most part insignificant in my opinion.


Moving around I never move all my guys at once through jumps with broadcast it's stupid and asking for you to lose stuff something is always eventually going to go wrong. So whatever.


If I'm moving around in system use fleet warp and done.


So we've covered targeting, activating modules/weapons and basic movement in legit ways with only the barest of time increases but there is a slight delay


I just don't see how it's going to change very much at all other than to be a way to ban the stupid or lazy folks that don't time to set things up right and legit.

I'm actually more concerned about False positives.

if CCP is relying solely on time delays between clients showing a key press to detect broadcasts thats just not going to work.

I can press one key 10 times in a second easily. thats 0.1 seconds per key press or 100MS and as I showed above that will send the commands i need legitimately.

so I expect CCP is going to include other standards for detecting broadcasts than just time. I also know they'll never tell us what they are and I don't blame them for not telling us either.

because in both solution I listed above you could build in buffer time delays between the key presses of a variable amount
so its never the same amount which can be used to try defeat time detections but frankly im pressing the key 10 times i dont need to add in crazy time delays

That's my only concern about this change is getting tagged as breaking the rules when I'm not.

I give CCP credit for trying to address what they perceive as a issue by the community.

It took courage knowing it was going to **** off a lot of folks and cost them subscriptions because the feeling is this is what the community wants.

But ultimately I don't think It's going to change a thing.

We are all a bunch of crazy inventive people when we choose to be and quit trolling each other.

I'm sure someone has already thought of even better and legit ways of doing things than I listed above too. Multiboxing in this game is worth the effort of thinking up legit solutions so it's not going anywhere.
Destiny Corrupted
Deadly Viper Kitten Mitten Sewing Company
Senpai's Afterschool Anime and Gaming Club
#1077 - 2014-11-26 06:45:33 UTC
sniperskitz wrote:
Jita spam ban when?

Also to everyone saying impossible to detect hardware macros and all the else, they will be looking at commands sent to server, if they are too fast and consistent it will be monitored and reviewed.

Just wait for ISBoxer to have a delayed broadcast option

What is the difference between having mouse drivers input F1-F4 with a single button press (also keep in mind that pretty much all hardware macros now support the addition of delays between commands), or yours truly picking up a Tic Tac container from the desk and using it to uniformly press those same keys on the keyboard at once?

I wrote some true EVE stories! And no, they're not of the generic "my 0.0 alliance had lots of 0.0 fleets and took a lot of 0.0 space" sort. Check them out here:

https://truestories.eveonline.com/users/2074-destiny-corrupted

kraken11 jensen
ROOKS AND KRAKENS
#1078 - 2014-11-26 06:48:31 UTC
Captain StringfellowHawk wrote:
Suffer short term losses of a Botting community er "Broadcasting" community.. to appease the Actual Playing community. Best Holiday present Ever. I will be glad to see the reduction of Bot-aspirant Behavior as CODE. would put it. Watch actual pilots moving ships more on their own instead of mass undocking 20 Miners or Cruisers at once. I much enjoyed the old days before ISboxer fully became a thing in EVE where you faught actual players not just clones upon clones. I have no problems with people using ISboxer to neaten up the monitors they use and for quick switching between screens. But I do hold issue with them piloting them all at once. Activating hardeners all at once, clearing out Belts all at once, or Destroying a fleet single handedly with their own private army.

Do not get me wrong, I am hella impressed with the skill it takes behind ISboxer armies fighting Lag and everything else to fully pull off some of those amazing kills. but I will not miss it



Miners wont stop mining, you dont have to use brodcasting to mine. Using the brodcasting while mining would only make bigger problem than not using it. its not like you going to all target the same stone. (unless you really have miss understood game mechanics) and we also got fleet Warp. so i see nothing changing about mining. Aand It's Not botting if players doing it. Botters are ai's who dont need human interferance for doing Things.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#1079 - 2014-11-26 06:49:04 UTC
Destiny Corrupted wrote:
sniperskitz wrote:
Jita spam ban when?

Also to everyone saying impossible to detect hardware macros and all the else, they will be looking at commands sent to server, if they are too fast and consistent it will be monitored and reviewed.

Just wait for ISBoxer to have a delayed broadcast option

What is the difference between having mouse drivers input F1-F4 with a single button press (also keep in mind that pretty much all hardware macros now support the addition of delays between commands), or yours truly picking up a Tic Tac container from the desk and using it to uniformly press those same keys on the keyboard at once?


Or using 4 fingers at once?

If CCP goes down this road CCP would be very stupid as the number of false positives would be very significant.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#1080 - 2014-11-26 06:49:48 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Nolak Ataru wrote:
Mike Azariah wrote:
Last point. There is, here, a warning of a rule change coming. I have yet to see any salient argument except for people warning of their leaving, which is to be expected. Multiboxing and simultaneity of commands has lessened our game, not made it better, and this change is long overdue. It may cause some to go and take their 'x' accounts with them. The PEOPLE will be missed but not what they were doing.


Counter-point: I have yet to see any salient argument as to why it should be banned besides "muh ice/minerals", "muh freighter afk piloting with 20b of stuff" and last but not least, "muh PLEX".

You keep ignoring the elephant in the room. You are using a 3rd party software to acquire more in game resources than a player not using said 3rd party software...even if they multibox.


CCP has time and again stated that the clause is on a PER CHARACTER basis. 1/10 made me reply.


Teckos Pech wrote:
Nolak Ataru wrote:
I would like to request that CCP consider allowing Broadcasting to be used to update skillqueues, whether it be adding skills to the queue via broadcasting throughout, or only allowing one to hit "Accept" at the very end of manually-adding skills to the queue.


Well lets see, will it make it more efficient for players to acquire skill points...is it a third party software? Yes, and yes. Then no. Roll


Again, per-toon basis. If CCP is going to let us log in our set at once using ISBoxer, then this is not that big of a deal. Please, think with the head on your shoulders.