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luxlunae

Communication macros: "Yes, I'm multiboxing dammit"

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The subject of behavior and interaction in video games, especially strangers has long been of interest to me. I've often wondered: "What can I say in this moment to foster teamwork and facilitate getting the job done?" in a variety of gaming contexts. I marvel watching my significant other play co-op games where everyone is silent until the recriminations and bile start halfway through the match. A little communication can go a long way towards ensuring success, I don't consider it optional. When new heroics come out, one of the first things I do is look for one of those "boss guides in a sentence" websites so that I can copy-paste it into dungeon chat. The more people understand about what damages them the less bitching at the healer (usually me) occurs. Win-win.

In some situations (usually multiboxing) I find that a nice macro goes a long way. It allows me to build communication and rapport without taking the time to type things out each time. The first team I ever took into dungeons using LFD was a ProtPally/RestoDruid combination, and I was careful not to be seen obviously multiboxing because I was very nervous about impacting other peoples play time with my hobby. What I did to smooth the way (from Deadmines up) was start every dungeon with a macro that said something like this:

/p Hi, this is my first tanking character so please help me out by dpsing the skull first!

And then I made sure my single target dps macro marked the target with skull. This was surprisingly effective. The team was a great success, I never had anyone notice I was multiboxing, although I occasionally would mention it to someone at the end of the run if they asked if "I can requeue with 'you guys' ". Not especially relevant but my cloak and dagger pretending to be two solo players extended to the point of sometimes switching to the healer on a boss fight just for the sake of running around a bit (like a real druid healer, get some jumping in) and having the toons in different guilds.

Last summer I decided to work on levelling my guild with only 4 active boxes and that means I wanted a dungeon team that could knock out the weekly dungeons for good xp with a minimum of fuss. I wasn't especially interested in paying an additional $15 a month for the privilege of filling the final slot, so I decided to go with 3 ret paladins and a prot paladin. This time my macro wasn't designed to confuse anyone, just preferably get them to actually participate in the process. I'm sure many of you have observed that solo players that end up in an instance with four boxed toons either react "Lol" or become dickish. I went with:
/i Good Morning/Evening
/i (Yes I am playing more than one character. No this is not botting. Also you will get extra loot because I don't roll on much.)

/i Make sure you need on anything (gear, crafting mats, etc) that you want for any reason.
With this macro I hoped to address the "this is weird" element right off the bat and get people moving towards the goal of defeating the dungeon together.

So now in rift I face the same sort of challenge when I enter Instant Adventures and I'd like to design a communication macro that 1) defuses annoyance 2) encourages anyone curious about multiboxing to ask about it. Until now I've mostly just been doing my usual "Hi all" or "Good evening" when I join the group and participating in conversations about objectives if they come up. The challenge here is that rift players start out a lot more hostile to boxers than wow players, to the extent that I stopped playing last summer after too much harassment.

Version 1:
/ra Good afternoon! Yes, I'm currently playing five characters. Please address all questions/insults/allegations about my mother to Xanshiny.
Rift only allows one /ra in a macro so we'll try this one out. I'm hoping for some lols and some casual interest, we'll see how it works out for me.

Updated 07-25-2014 at 05:27 PM by luxlunae

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Comments

  1. Ughmahedhurtz's Avatar
    I've always had the desire to take a day and craft some kind of generic conversation script. One that I could trigger when I saw the inevitable "WTF?!?" bubble from someone standing next to me at a mailbox. You know, sort of a campy fireside joke telling session that looked essentially like a group of quirky people talking to each other. And throw in an a sidebar discussion about people that never saw a multiboxer before and how silly they look saying "wtf" every time they see something they've never seen before.

    The beauty of that idea is that (I'm pretty sure) Rift has a delay system you can use to make that easier. Of course, you could always just set up a big-ass multi-step macro in ISBoxer that you could use in any game.

    It is a dream I have...
  2. JohnGabriel's Avatar
    Ahahahahaha

    I'm pretty sure your toon also points at your target when you do a /point, throw a few of those in there.

    Just to be clear, you mean like having your different toons say things individually with a delay, making it look like they are having a discussion amongst themselves and/or the "wtf guy"?

    Because that would be awesome. I'm going to go practice some emotes now.
  3. MiRai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz
    The beauty of that idea is that (I'm pretty sure) Rift has a delay system you can use to make that easier. Of course, you could always just set up a big-ass multi-step macro in ISBoxer that you could use in any game.
    Or...

    http://www.wowinterface.com/download...SlashInin.html

    (obviously for WoW)

    ...but I usually resort to the multiple steps in ISBoxer approach anyway.
  4. Ughmahedhurtz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by JohnGabriel
    Just to be clear, you mean like having your different toons say things individually with a delay, making it look like they are having a discussion amongst themselves and/or the "wtf guy"?
    Yes, exactly!

    /evil
    /muahahahaaaaaa
  5. MiRai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by JohnGabriel
    Just to be clear, you mean like having your different toons say things individually with a delay, making it look like they are having a discussion amongst themselves and/or the "wtf guy"?

    Because that would be awesome. I'm going to go practice some emotes now.
    Using multiple steps in ISBoxer is how I created this scene:

    http://youtu.be/2t_ctkO7SFc?t=6m26s

    As well as two others throughout that series.
  6. luxlunae's Avatar
    I feel inspired by mirai. I think I want to do a scene from a movie or a book. I'm on an RP server so this will probably annoy real RPers.
  7. MiRai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by luxlunae
    I feel inspired by mirai. I think I want to do a scene from a movie or a book. I'm on an RP server so this will probably annoy real RPers.
    I have always wanted to do like a full scene/conversation, especially on an RP server. Not only to add more to some of the RP that already goes on, but to motivate other RPers to multibox as well for their own scenes.
  8. JohnGabriel's Avatar
    They would start thinking of us as NPCs.

    Could also randomly open trade windows and hand out items related to your story, or candy.