These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE General Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Update regarding Multiboxing and input automation

First post First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2361 - 2014-12-06 02:05:24 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
So basically because I pointed out that a suggestion had no effect whatsoever after a few moments of thought on the topic at hand I should give you a pass on investing those same few moments of thought.
You willful blindness to the reasoning is something I won't address from here forward though. Lucas Kell, for all that we have disagreed on sees a reason even if he should believe this has no effect on that, or so it would seem to me. You can't even come to that point.
But oddly I have been talking about the so called end to the issue, but have been clear that this is far more direct and addresses different manifestations of the issue better. If you think I'm wrong give me something other than self righteous soapboxing.


Not at all. If you have an issue with my solution, instead of sidestepping the solution, I would have accepted any sort of constructive criticism. You claim that "captcha" for bombers are merely a nuisance. I have no doubt it'd be "merely" a nuisance for a single bomber, but for someone like Replicator, he wouldn't be able to launch his 60+ bombs and have them do damage, which is what we were discussing here. As for the mining minigame, it would reward active players sitting behind their keyboard and require concentration on their screen, not people who warp to a belt, hit F1, and walk away. It would also prevent ISBoxers from gaining the same advantage that would be given to the single miner.

As I've mentioned, I have not seen a proper argument set out by CCP or anyone else that supports the ban other than "muh feelings". If you would like to bring to my attention a valid reason, by all means, go ahead. But please stop circling around whenever I ask for a real reason by saying "you'll just ignore it". If your reason, and Kell's, is that it allows massive alpha strikes, why is it that ISBoxers are the only ones capable of such alpha strikes? Many if not all of the gank mails with non-boxers using Tornados achieved their kill with a coordinated alpha strike before the target could activate an appreciable tank after decloaking off a gate or undocking. Shall we ban gankers simply because someone "may" pull off a 140k alpha strike with 9 of his buddies in Tornados?

I'd love to know your definition of "soapboxing" because as far as I can tell, you apply it to anyone who presents an argument against the ban that isn't two sentences long. Just because a change is direct, or made with the best intentions, doesn't mean it's good, or that it will work as intended, or that it was targeting the right problem. If I think CCP is making a change for the wrong reasons or that will have the wrong outcome, I will say something, and I will attempt to posit other ideas or changes that may be, not necessarily *better*, but finer tuned than the sledgehammer approach.
Lady Rift
His Majesty's Privateers
#2362 - 2014-12-06 02:28:40 UTC
Nolak Ataru wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
So basically because I pointed out that a suggestion had no effect whatsoever after a few moments of thought on the topic at hand I should give you a pass on investing those same few moments of thought.
You willful blindness to the reasoning is something I won't address from here forward though. Lucas Kell, for all that we have disagreed on sees a reason even if he should believe this has no effect on that, or so it would seem to me. You can't even come to that point.
But oddly I have been talking about the so called end to the issue, but have been clear that this is far more direct and addresses different manifestations of the issue better. If you think I'm wrong give me something other than self righteous soapboxing.


Not at all. If you have an issue with my solution, instead of sidestepping the solution, I would have accepted any sort of constructive criticism. You claim that "captcha" for bombers are merely a nuisance. I have no doubt it'd be "merely" a nuisance for a single bomber, but for someone like Replicator, he wouldn't be able to launch his 60+ bombs and have them do damage, which is what we were discussing here. As for the mining minigame, it would reward active players sitting behind their keyboard and require concentration on their screen, not people who warp to a belt, hit F1, and walk away. It would also prevent ISBoxers from gaining the same advantage that would be given to the single miner.

As I've mentioned, I have not seen a proper argument set out by CCP or anyone else that supports the ban other than "muh feelings". If you would like to bring to my attention a valid reason, by all means, go ahead. But please stop circling around whenever I ask for a real reason by saying "you'll just ignore it". If your reason, and Kell's, is that it allows massive alpha strikes, why is it that ISBoxers are the only ones capable of such alpha strikes? Many if not all of the gank mails with non-boxers using Tornados achieved their kill with a coordinated alpha strike before the target could activate an appreciable tank after decloaking off a gate or undocking. Shall we ban gankers simply because someone "may" pull off a 140k alpha strike with 9 of his buddies in Tornados?

I'd love to know your definition of "soapboxing" because as far as I can tell, you apply it to anyone who presents an argument against the ban that isn't two sentences long. Just because a change is direct, or made with the best intentions, doesn't mean it's good, or that it will work as intended, or that it was targeting the right problem. If I think CCP is making a change for the wrong reasons or that will have the wrong outcome, I will say something, and I will attempt to posit other ideas or changes that may be, not necessarily *better*, but finer tuned than the sledgehammer approach.



so you want to make mining a more boring and pain in the ass job it than it already is by forcing miners to pay attention to the screen all the time to get there ****** rewards. Have you seen the complaining about the hacking minigame and how people dislike it and that at least has a chance of good isk behind it.



The reason they are banning it is in the op
"There are various ways to do it, and since there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding what is and isn’t allowed, we’d like to clarify a few terms and exactly how the EULA and our Policies must be interpreted and how some things are shifting.

Over the last few weeks we have gone through an internal review process to clarify what exactly the EULA and ToS require in terms of input automation, input multiplexing and input broadcasting. This is the result of that review process and an outline of how we will interpret things going forward."

They want to clarify there TOS and EULA and after review have decided that input multiplexing is against the rules and they will be cracking down on its use.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#2363 - 2014-12-06 02:29:46 UTC
Nolak Ataru wrote:
Not at all. If you have an issue with my solution, instead of sidestepping the solution, I would have accepted any sort of constructive criticism. You claim that "captcha" for bombers are merely a nuisance. I have no doubt it'd be "merely" a nuisance for a single bomber, but for someone like Replicator, he wouldn't be able to launch his 60+ bombs and have them do damage, which is what we were discussing here. As for the mining minigame, it would reward active players sitting behind their keyboard and require concentration on their screen, not people who warp to a belt, hit F1, and walk away. It would also prevent ISBoxers from gaining the same advantage that would be given to the single miner.

As I've mentioned, I have not seen a proper argument set out by CCP or anyone else that supports the ban other than "muh feelings". If you would like to bring to my attention a valid reason, by all means, go ahead. But please stop circling around whenever I ask for a real reason by saying "you'll just ignore it". If your reason, and Kell's, is that it allows massive alpha strikes, why is it that ISBoxers are the only ones capable of such alpha strikes? Many if not all of the gank mails with non-boxers using Tornados achieved their kill with a coordinated alpha strike before the target could activate an appreciable tank after decloaking off a gate or undocking. Shall we ban gankers simply because someone "may" pull off a 140k alpha strike with 9 of his buddies in Tornados?

I'd love to know your definition of "soapboxing" because as far as I can tell, you apply it to anyone who presents an argument against the ban that isn't two sentences long. Just because a change is direct, or made with the best intentions, doesn't mean it's good, or that it will work as intended, or that it was targeting the right problem. If I think CCP is making a change for the wrong reasons or that will have the wrong outcome, I will say something, and I will attempt to posit other ideas or changes that may be, not necessarily *better*, but finer tuned than the sledgehammer approach.
So here we have to agree to disagree as to whether pointing out the intentional creation of nuisances is constructive or sidestepping. We'll also have to agree to disagree with the concept that an action taken by a subset of players should be addressed by involving the whole player base in a non beneficial change.

As to the reason, it's again the multiplied capabilities of a single player. There is of course contention as far as where the extent of that divide lies, but that still moves well beyond the point of having no reason and into questioning efficacy. Even that statement that you don't believe capabilities at the player level shouldn't be a consideration that still leaves an actual acknowledgement for reasoning, but a disagreement with that reasoning.

And it's that level of acknowledgement that invalidates the idea retaliatory that if a group of people can do something it needs to be removed alongside allowing a single person to do it with the same number of clients as if they were one because we've moved past the hyperbolic conclusion that this is happening because people lose ships to alpha strikes.

And sandboxing is an appropriate term for continuing to promote the idea that this is an advantage one is entitled to have go unchanged because others are clearly failing in some capacity and can only "whine." But lets revisit the mechanics question because as stated in a prior post I'm still at an impasse. We still have basic combat mechanics pushing us in the direction of coordinated actions. That being the case how do we ensure multiple client roles in low number/single player activities involving purely combat? Missions for instance or most incursion sites currently being boxed. Even in the case we do assure multiple roles how do we prevent clients in a pure combat role from being boxed by a single individual, or do we not care about broadcasting if a second person is in the fleet?
Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2364 - 2014-12-06 03:42:01 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
So here we have to agree to disagree as to whether pointing out the intentional creation of nuisances is constructive or sidestepping. We'll also have to agree to disagree with the concept that an action taken by a subset of players should be addressed by involving the whole player base in a non beneficial change.

As to the reason, it's again the multiplied capabilities of a single player. There is of course contention as far as where the extent of that divide lies, but that still moves well beyond the point of having no reason and into questioning efficacy. Even that statement that you don't believe capabilities at the player level shouldn't be a consideration that still leaves an actual acknowledgement for reasoning, but a disagreement with that reasoning.

And it's that level of acknowledgement that invalidates the idea retaliatory that if a group of people can do something it needs to be removed alongside allowing a single person to do it with the same number of clients as if they were one because we've moved past the hyperbolic conclusion that this is happening because people lose ships to alpha strikes.

And sandboxing is an appropriate term for continuing to promote the idea that this is an advantage one is entitled to have go unchanged because others are clearly failing in some capacity and can only "whine." But lets revisit the mechanics question because as stated in a prior post I'm still at an impasse. We still have basic combat mechanics pushing us in the direction of coordinated actions. That being the case how do we ensure multiple client roles in low number/single player activities involving purely combat? Missions for instance or most incursion sites currently being boxed. Even in the case we do assure multiple roles how do we prevent clients in a pure combat role from being boxed by a single individual, or do we not care about broadcasting if a second person is in the fleet?


I guess we will have to disagree. I'm willing to sit at the table and listen to your arguments so long as they aren't "muh feelings", and you aren't willing to sit and talk unless you get to talk about "muh feelings". CCP has proven they are happy changing "one" thing that targeted a subset of their playerbase that would involve the rest of the players. It's not anything different.

There are skills in EVE that can 'multiply the capability", as you say of what a player can do that can seem "unfair" to someone less trained. Market order skills, contracting skills, industry skills, Fleet bonus skills.... the list goes on. Not even counting simple dualboxing with no extra software. If we take two players fighting each other with two accounts each, the one with better dualboxing skills or micromanagement skills will come out on top. I believe strongly in skill at the player level. To imply otherwise is outright lying. To imply that player skill is not involved in incursion fleets, in bomber fleets, or in mining fleets, is ludicrous, and anyone who's spent a decent amount of time in the aforementioned professions will laugh you out of system local.

It's not just the alpha strike example I brought up, but I will give you credit for attempting to cherry-pick. People have been for ages saying "I don't want to sub 10 accounts for my mining fleet, so why should he?" and I was attempting to provide a situation where one does not need to sub 10 accounts to "match" the boxer. There is no situation in EVE where a fleet of equally skilled and experienced pilots as an ISBoxer cannot attain the same or greater efficiency as an ISBoxer with the possible exception of creating a new set of characters that look exactly the same and are designated numerically.

I'll presume you meant "soapboxing" when you were typing. I'll reverse your argument:
"this is an advantage one is entitled to have changed because others are flying their own fleet of clients and spend no time attempting to better themselves, disrupt the gameplay of the ISBoxer, move out of the area, or otherwise perform some action that does not involve running to mommy." There is very little CCP can do to limit the number of clients a person can use when one considers that university dorms and other similar forms of housing generally have the same outgoing IP for multiple computers. CCP created an upper limit to the number of clients one can box in incursions by limiting site payout. They also changed how ice spawns. No doubt they have other tricks up their sleeves that we haven't seen yet, and I will reserve judgement till I see it posted by CCP themselves.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#2365 - 2014-12-06 04:18:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
Nolak Ataru wrote:
I guess we will have to disagree. I'm willing to sit at the table and listen to your arguments so long as they aren't "muh feelings", and you aren't willing to sit and talk unless you get to talk about "muh feelings". CCP has proven they are happy changing "one" thing that targeted a subset of their playerbase that would involve the rest of the players. It's not anything different.
Yeah, I purposely and directly divorced from the concept of "feelings" in reasoning in the very post you responded to. Yet I still get this in response. That's why I stated we were done talking about reasons.

Nolak Ataru wrote:
There are skills in EVE that can 'multiply the capability", as you say of what a player can do that can seem "unfair" to someone less trained. Market order skills, contracting skills, industry skills, Fleet bonus skills.... the list goes on. Not even counting simple dualboxing with no extra software. If we take two players fighting each other with two accounts each, the one with better dualboxing skills or micromanagement skills will come out on top. I believe strongly in skill at the player level. To imply otherwise is outright lying. To imply that player skill is not involved in incursion fleets, in bomber fleets, or in mining fleets, is ludicrous, and anyone who's spent a decent amount of time in the aforementioned professions will laugh you out of system local.

It's not just the alpha strike example I brought up, but I will give you credit for attempting to cherry-pick. People have been for ages saying "I don't want to sub 10 accounts for my mining fleet, so why should he?" and I was attempting to provide a situation where one does not need to sub 10 accounts to "match" the boxer. There is no situation in EVE where a fleet of equally skilled and experienced pilots as an ISBoxer cannot attain the same or greater efficiency as an ISBoxer with the possible exception of creating a new set of characters that look exactly the same and are designated numerically.

I'll presume you meant "soapboxing" when you were typing. I'll reverse your argument:
"this is an advantage one is entitled to have changed because others are flying their own fleet of clients and spend no time attempting to better themselves, disrupt the gameplay of the ISBoxer, move out of the area, or otherwise perform some action that does not involve running to mommy." There is very little CCP can do to limit the number of clients a person can use when one considers that university dorms and other similar forms of housing generally have the same outgoing IP for multiple computers. CCP created an upper limit to the number of clients one can box in incursions by limiting site payout. They also changed how ice spawns. No doubt they have other tricks up their sleeves that we haven't seen yet, and I will reserve judgement till I see it posted by CCP themselves.
We have no disagreement on the concept if player skill, but I would ask how that is related to the change as I missed the tie in. Similarly I missed how CCP created and controlled advantages shouldn't or can't be evaluated separately from the various advantages provided by differing functions in 3rd party software.

Also I'm lost as to how responding to a scenario you created means I'm cherry picking. Do I have to expand every scenario you give me to every in game activity for it to be in some way valid? Moving beyond that we've come to a comparison between a group of players and a broadcaster, which makes sense only if we take the position that CCP need not be concerned with what single players can do, but rather only what groups of clients of a given size can do. Given this decision and the CSM minutes I don't think that's the conclusion being reached. I don't see a reason why that point of view is in error.

And yes, I meant soapboxing, failure on my part and sorry for the confusion.

I'm missing something in the last paragraph beyond that though. If it is what I think it is, more crying on your part because people have the capacity to disagree with you and voice that disagreement, please note that you are not entitled to have your fits invalidate the feedback of other players by pretending you actions within the game are limited to the grid you happen to reside in.

I get the latter portion about limitations in some regards, though conversely limited resources favor being able to massively ramp up harvesting capacity, falling squarely in the multiboxer's favor, meanwhile while site limitations cap the number of raw clients that can pushed into a task they still allow for interruptions to be minimized by limiting downtime and pick up to the whims and organization of a single person, as well as eliminating any need for gathering or coordination on the part of other fleet members just to be able to start doing anything.
Lupe Meza
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2366 - 2014-12-06 04:40:10 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Nolak Ataru wrote:
I guess we will have to disagree. I'm willing to sit at the table and listen to your arguments so long as they aren't "muh feelings", and you aren't willing to sit and talk unless you get to talk about "muh feelings". CCP has proven they are happy changing "one" thing that targeted a subset of their playerbase that would involve the rest of the players. It's not anything different.
Yeah, I purposely and directly divorced from the concept of "feelings" in reasoning in the very post you responded to. Yet I still get this in response. That's why I stated we were done talking about reasons.

Nolak Ataru wrote:
There are skills in EVE that can 'multiply the capability", as you say of what a player can do that can seem "unfair" to someone less trained. Market order skills, contracting skills, industry skills, Fleet bonus skills.... the list goes on. Not even counting simple dualboxing with no extra software. If we take two players fighting each other with two accounts each, the one with better dualboxing skills or micromanagement skills will come out on top. I believe strongly in skill at the player level. To imply otherwise is outright lying. To imply that player skill is not involved in incursion fleets, in bomber fleets, or in mining fleets, is ludicrous, and anyone who's spent a decent amount of time in the aforementioned professions will laugh you out of system local.

It's not just the alpha strike example I brought up, but I will give you credit for attempting to cherry-pick. People have been for ages saying "I don't want to sub 10 accounts for my mining fleet, so why should he?" and I was attempting to provide a situation where one does not need to sub 10 accounts to "match" the boxer. There is no situation in EVE where a fleet of equally skilled and experienced pilots as an ISBoxer cannot attain the same or greater efficiency as an ISBoxer with the possible exception of creating a new set of characters that look exactly the same and are designated numerically.

I'll presume you meant "soapboxing" when you were typing. I'll reverse your argument:
"this is an advantage one is entitled to have changed because others are flying their own fleet of clients and spend no time attempting to better themselves, disrupt the gameplay of the ISBoxer, move out of the area, or otherwise perform some action that does not involve running to mommy." There is very little CCP can do to limit the number of clients a person can use when one considers that university dorms and other similar forms of housing generally have the same outgoing IP for multiple computers. CCP created an upper limit to the number of clients one can box in incursions by limiting site payout. They also changed how ice spawns. No doubt they have other tricks up their sleeves that we haven't seen yet, and I will reserve judgement till I see it posted by CCP themselves.
We have no disagreement on the concept if player skill, but I would ask how that is related to the change as I missed the tie in. Similarly I missed how CCP created and controlled advantages shouldn't or can't be evaluated separately from the various advantages provided by differing functions in 3rd party software.

Also I'm lost as to how responding to a scenario you created means I'm cherry picking. Do I have to expand every scenario you give me to every in game activity for it to be in some way valid? Moving beyond that we've come to a comparison between a group of players and a broadcaster, which makes sense only if we take the position that CCP need not be concerned with what single players can do, but rather only what groups of clients of a given size can do. Given this decision and the CSM minutes I don't think that's the conclusion being reached. I don't see a reason why that point of view is in error.

And yes, I meant soapboxing, failure on my part and sorry for the confusion.

I'm missing something in the last paragraph beyond that though. If it is what I think it is, more crying on your part because people have the capacity to disagree with you and voice that disagreement, please note that you are not entitled to have your fits invalidate the feedback of other players by pretending you actions within the game are limited to the grid you happen to reside in.

I get the latter portion about limitations in some regards, though conversely limited resources favor being able to massively ramp up harvesting capacity, falling squarely in the multiboxer's favor, meanwhile while site limitations cap the number of raw clients that can pushed into a task they still allow for interruptions to be minimized by limiting downtime and pick up to the whims and organization of a single person, as well as eliminating any need for gathering or coordination on the part of other fleet members just to be able to start doing anything.


Uh...did this guy just win the Internet?

What happens now?
Mike Adoulin
Happys Happy Hamster Hunting Club
#2367 - 2014-12-06 06:09:03 UTC
About goddamn time.

+1 CCP.

Everything in EVE is a trap.

And if it isn't, it's your job to make it a trap...:)

You want to know what immorality in EVE Online looks like? Look no further than Ripard "Jester" Teg.

Chribba is the Chuck Norris of EVE.
Alexa Machavela
KarmaFleet University
#2368 - 2014-12-06 06:28:18 UTC
Rawthorm wrote:
... I don't think they began to come close to outweighing the benefits such as making Ice easy to harvest leaving the rest of us time to actually play the more fun aspects of EvE rather than spend half our lives slowly grinding icecubes.
Almost every player in EvE has benefited from cheaper fuel and cheaper ships because of those using ISBoxer, so is an overriding ban worth it just to get rid of a few trolling bombers on your space?


Non-ISBoxing high sec miners complain about ISBoxers taking nearly all the ice in high sec. After all, it's hard to make a profit mining ice that isn't there because some greedy ISBoxer mined it all.

Your conclusion: Non-ISBoxing high miners love it when ISBoxers mine all the ice out from under them as it saves them time.

Seems legit.

So long, and thanks for all the isk.
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2369 - 2014-12-06 10:15:09 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
That's what I was doing. Exploring the concept of what it takes to ensure client a has to be doing something different than client B. In the case of combat PvE that is never the case because reducing incoming damage and mitigating hostile repair always makes you want to have all your clients do the same thing. So are you saying the core fundamentals of all of Eve's in space combat is flawed?
No, I'm saying that EVE PVE is flawed. The fact that you can look up a mission or a site and see exactly every wave that will come out including triggers and how they will act is evidence of this. Think about normal PvP. You couldn't multibox a fleet in a normal PvP fight. Like the AT, you could't multibox an AT fight and hope to win. If PvE required more roles than just DPS and reps, then it would already be more difficult to multibox and more interesting to play.

Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Also to what point should this scale? How do we prevent small groups from broadcasting tasks in groups? Or is 2 players with 20 broadcasted clients not an issue while one guy with 10 is? As it is now each client acting individually is horrendously undesirable and that issue goes far deeper than content design into core mechanics and simple math. Resolve that and we're fundamentally playing a different game.
That would be entirely up to CCP to decide. Like with drone assist, they have statistics they can use in the background to work out where to end up to cut out "bad" behaviour and keep in legitimate use cases. However you look at it though, using one feature of ISBoxer asa scapegoat for gameplay balance issues is the wrong way to go.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#2370 - 2014-12-06 20:38:42 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
No, I'm saying that EVE PVE is flawed. The fact that you can look up a mission or a site and see exactly every wave that will come out including triggers and how they will act is evidence of this. Think about normal PvP. You couldn't multibox a fleet in a normal PvP fight. Like the AT, you could't multibox an AT fight and hope to win. If PvE required more roles than just DPS and reps, then it would already be more difficult to multibox and more interesting to play.
...

That would be entirely up to CCP to decide. Like with drone assist, they have statistics they can use in the background to work out where to end up to cut out "bad" behaviour and keep in legitimate use cases. However you look at it though, using one feature of ISBoxer asa scapegoat for gameplay balance issues is the wrong way to go.
The static nature of the content is a separate issue. Even if you had different triggers, waves, spawn points etc for each instance of a mission it doesn't create a reason for clients to be doing different things. If there is a jammer on the field, the fact that you didn't know it was coming doesn't mean you don't eliminate it with a focused volley. If something has high repair capacity or is giving RR you still want to focus fire on it to burn it down regardless of whether you could read about it showing up or not.

Now, yes, if you build the necessity of more roles into PvE, sure, and that may even be for the best. However, looking at an effort and effectiveness standpoint, if you have a problem with what is going on now, regardless of what opinions may have been in the past, it doesn't make sense to wait until you overhaul every PvE encounter to takes steps to mitigate it.

Or maybe it does to some people considering how long this has been allowed, but it doesn't change the fact that this is the biggest, simplest step that can be taken right now, even if gameplay alterations aren't being made alongside it.
SJ Astralana
Syncore
#2371 - 2014-12-07 12:02:43 UTC
Longtom McGregor wrote:

CCP reserve the right to change the terms.


Pray they don't alter them further.

Hyperdrive your production business: Eve Production Manager

Zoya Talvanen
Section 23
#2372 - 2014-12-07 20:53:33 UTC
Well, I have given away most of my characters and was preparing to distribute assets and unsub this one when I saw this. The use cases people have mentioned do not touch the slimier ones.

Suppose you have a POS and a genuine alliance with one char per player, or maybe two in simple dualboxing. Along comes some multiboxer using input multiplexing and broadcasting for a mining fleet and finds that he gets to strip only half a system because one of your corporations is eating the other rocks and reprocessing at a POS. With the income from his 20 accounts he has enough ISK left over after PLEXing them all to hire mercs to wardec the whole alliance.

A fleet of 17 toons, a fleet of 20 toons, a fleet of 50 toons, I have seen them all. An ice anomaly folds in less than an hour against a 50-toon fleet. There were some broadcast incursion fleets that were helping ordinary incursion fleets manipulate the game to maximize production of benefits, so some incursion fleets had a rule about banning players from their fleets who turned in any multiboxers for botting.

Well, I still have this account and I will renew a few more times to see what happens. It is sad that CCP took this long to deal with it, but their policy is correct from my viewpoint, well, almost correct. How many macro uses can be masked by routing through the ISBoxer server?

One nice result of this inaction (dating back to 2010) is that our alliance did develop a theoretical fleet doctrine to mine in low where bot hordes are less common. Unfortunately, we have been unable to implement it for lack of trained pilots.

Ah well, thanks, CCP.

Zoya
Zoya Talvanen
Section 23
#2373 - 2014-12-07 21:23:48 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
PotatoOverdose wrote:
So....all of isboxer banned by sometime 2015? That's probably whats going to happen if ccp realizes that the multiboxing community is getting around the "spirit of the law," as it were.
Pretty much. The problem is they won't really be able to ban things like round robin or global keybinds, as there's no reliable way to detect whether a player is actually switching to a screen an pushing the button or if the button is doing the switch and push itself. That's why the change will always be pretty much ineffective. The reason they are only banning broadcasting is because that's pretty much the only control method used by multiboxers they can actually detect.

The change they need to make is to make the gameplay more interactive, so multiboxing even with broadcasts is either more difficult of less rewarding per character than playing with full attention on a single client. That would actually fix the problem.


Yes, our fleet doctrine for lowsec mining is definitely highly interactive. You cannot AFK for more than 20 seconds while actively playing. One approach to making mining more interactive is to reduce mining barge capacity (but not productivity) so that attention is required frequently. And for incursions, the off-grid bonuses could be sharply reduced, but that isn't adequate in either case.

One certain thing is that no matter what CCP does, some folk will find a way to circumvent it. If we really want a more orderly community, it is likely the players who will have to do it with their own actions, and those sorts of actions cannot be done easily in hisec. Wardecs against the circumventers will produce wardecs from mercs and the circumventers will almost always have more ISK.

Then they came for the solo players, and I did not speak out because I wasn't a solo player. There are actually solo player niches, and "making things more interactive" could eliminate some of them. Any remedy is going to require more thought and planning than we can achieve in this media. What CCP is doing is probably a step in the right direction, and I support it, but it is just part of a continuous improvement process. When the whole problem is too difficult to solve, you try to make changes to solve the largest part of it you can, then freeze that and look for what else rears its ugly head.


Zoya
Jadzia-Dax
Yar's Revenge
#2374 - 2014-12-08 02:36:41 UTC
Ama Scelesta wrote:
RIP ISBoxer?


FYI, ISBoxer can still be used! Using the broadcast mode is not required to multibox in most cases. Look at mining, the broadcast modes were more for quality of life use but not required. Rather then broadcast mode dropping all the ore from all ships at one time, don't use that function and click on the screen and do it individually.

So to all the cryers out there who hate multiboxing miners, we can still box and mine and not violate the EULA. Sorry for the bad news, lol!!

FYI, ISBoxer only does the below when you want it to. So to remain legal you just don't do those actions and those actions are few when it comes to mining.


"Input Broadcasting and Input Multiplexing refer to the multiplication of inputs, actions and events to multiple instances of the game."
Meutrich
Quantum Nebula
#2375 - 2014-12-08 09:15:25 UTC
Quite a very good change!

Gives quality of gameplay back to a lot of players, willing to play a nice game. For sure, if any kind of input automation can really be discovered and will be followed up with all consequences.

Hooray for seeing 30+ NPC-corp mining fleets vanishing!
Hooray for seeing bomber fleets vanishing!

Hooray for this change! Can we get it earlier? Maybe - now?

And KUDOS to all those multiboxers, that nover bothered using any automation tool!
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2376 - 2014-12-08 09:53:07 UTC
Meutrich wrote:
Gives quality of gameplay back to a lot of players, willing to play a nice game. For sure, if any kind of input automation can really be discovered and will be followed up with all consequences.
What quality of gameplay changes are you expecting to see? Very little will change following this.

Meutrich wrote:
Hooray for seeing 30+ NPC-corp mining fleets vanishing!
These will still exist. They existed before ISBoxer was popular, they will still exist with 1 single feature of ISBoxer removed.

Meutrich wrote:
Hooray for seeing bomber fleets vanishing!
These will not change at all, as the changes don't affect bombers much at all. Bomber waves are limited by game mechanics, which means large scale bomber fleets get controlled in small groups. Round robin keybinds pretty much eliminate any noticeable impact from this change.

Meutrich wrote:
And KUDOS to all those multiboxers, that nover bothered using any automation tool!
It's not automation, so basically you just said "KUDOS to multiboxers that either do or don't use ISBoxer".

Good job buddy. This is why people should need to be educated in a subject before they are allowed to post. I can't wait for the buckets of tears when you still see multibox fleets all over and realise just how little this changes.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Meutrich
Quantum Nebula
#2377 - 2014-12-08 10:48:15 UTC
[quote=Lucas KellGood job buddy. This is why people should need to be educated in a subject before they are allowed to post. I can't wait for the buckets of tears when you still see multibox fleets all over and realise just how little this changes.[/quote]

Respect. You entirely got the point and are spot on.

I never ever referred to ISBoxer. I referred to the original CCP Post for punishing input automation with any means. While wondering, how they do it, it will punish, as they said, any kind of input automation, not ISBoxer only.

This of course will help vanish the large automated fleets of any kind, as it is a pita, managing large style accounts manually, if at least possible. People are different, but if you ever tried, boxing 4 or more accounts for simple mining and station hauling, you should know that. Unless you are pissed, because you always did that automated...

Next, once for example the giant fleets for ice mining are gone, the ice mining cartell is gone, which opens up the competition for ice mining and ice products again. And therefore the market.
I'm very curious, if we really see the ice products price sky rocket or if we see them first rise a bit, and as more and more real miners jump into it, they will fall pretty fast...
I guess, most people can follow on this. Maybe not everybody, but it is not my problem.
As well as most other people catch all the ironie. Not all, but most.

Fly safe and enjoy yourself :)
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2378 - 2014-12-08 12:29:04 UTC
Meutrich wrote:
I never ever referred to ISBoxer. I referred to the original CCP Post for punishing input automation with any means. While wondering, how they do it, it will punish, as they said, any kind of input automation, not ISBoxer only.
It's not automation they are banning. Automation is already banned and has been as long as I can remember. Input broadcasting is not automation.

Meutrich wrote:
This of course will help vanish the large automated fleets of any kind, as it is a pita, managing large style accounts manually, if at least possible. People are different, but if you ever tried, boxing 4 or more accounts for simple mining and station hauling, you should know that. Unless you are pissed, because you always did that automated...
Why will it help that disappear? Round robin keybinds will allow you to not have to switch between clients, as will VideoFX - 2 allowed and available features of ISBoxer. Even with broadcasting available, the vast majority of the time you are using VideoFX to control your clients as it allows granular control. If you think removing broadcasting will have much of an effect on most multiboxers, then you fundamentally misunderstand how ISBoxer is used. And again, it's not automation.

Meutrich wrote:
Next, once for example the giant fleets for ice mining are gone, the ice mining cartell is gone, which opens up the competition for ice mining and ice products again. And therefore the market.
Which won't happen. Mining gets done by massive multibox fleets because it requires so little input to do. The biggest advantage ISBoxer gives to allow mass multiboxing fleets is that it restricts your CPU usage and the FPS of each client, allowing you to run considerably more clients on a single PC. Until CCP prevent that, you will still see plenty of giant mining fleets, and they will still be the ones stripping the ice.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Delt0r Garsk
Shits N Giggles
#2379 - 2014-12-08 13:56:58 UTC
I can't tell if people are being serious or not.

I could trivially control 20 freighters with alt tab all traveling different routes. You have a minute between warps.

Mining is even easier and more trivial. 20 accounts with nothing but alt tab would be easy. While you can multibox there will be fleets of miners under the control of one person.

Now in PvP that would get pretty tricky.

As for these vast fleets of PvP isboxers, please show me them (i think in the last thread one one person could be shown to have done anything in the last 3 months! ). Fact is they don't exist. There is a very small number of people doing the 20+ account thing. Most of us are doing the 3-5 account thing.

AKA the scientist.

Death and Glory!

Well fun is also good.
Dizzy Greencow
Have I Got Moos For You
#2380 - 2014-12-08 15:13:13 UTC
Speaking as someone who was using multiple accounts to mine with and using isboxer's key broadcast features to do so, I was disappointed with CCP's decision but could understand some of the reasoning behind it.

I was also concerned about the fact that I'd paid for advanced subscriptions for accounts that I would no longer be able to effectively manage without the use of isboxer's broadcasting features.

I put in a petition regarding this and was referred to customer support, who have been kind enough to offer me an equitable solution to my concerns. They agreed to transfer the remaining game time credits that I'd prepaid on accounts I'd no longer be able to use, to the couple of accounts that I will be keeping.

I would just like to give a public acknowledgement and thanks to GMs Cydonnia and Stardust for arranging these transfers, which totalled over 3 years of game time, to the accounts I will be keeping. This gesture is very much appreciated.

If anyone else finds themselves in a similar position, with game time credits paid in advance on accounts they believe will no longer be effective, I would recommend contacting CCP customer support who have been been understanding and very helpful to me.