City of Hero

[tym733]

Anyone multi boxed City of hero before? Just curious, I played that before WoW. :D

[Hecro]

You are making an INCREDIBLE amount of new threads. Could you perhaps just gather your questions up in - well lets say 1!!! thread perhaps?

Sorry for the hickup, I just can't stand threads that are answer with 1 word.

[Poolboy]

Umm, nothing wrong with an excited new member asking a hundred questions... as long as they're in the right sections (which hers seem to be for the most part). Ease up?

The only thing I would suggest is a little searching first before posting such a vague general question. Granted, it has been proven that the search feature is a lil weak but i know there's been CoH discussion here many times.

[Rigz]

I did up untill shortly after the release of CoV which was awesome.

The same dev is making a new super hero mmo for consoles or something. Should be cool as hell, given there previous experiences.

[RobinGBrown]

Hello Tym

Your best bet is to give it a whirl with a couple of trial accounts. I used to play CoH/CoV as well and once I've finished my RAF levelling burst I'm going to take a week off to try out CoH multiboxing.

I'm hoping keyclone will work out just fine but if not I'll try out some of the free tools available.

Good luck!

[mmcookies]

my impression is that mboxing is "frowned upon" by cox devs

[Lost Ninja]

my impression is that mboxing is "frowned upon" by cox devsMy impression is that they have no issue with people paying for more than one account just like Blizz.

I currently Dual-Box CoH, in many ways its far easier to do than in WoW.

Pros:
Easy Targeting - In WoW to target someone else's target IIRC you have to use some sort of script/macro or an assist. In CoH all you do is target the person you want to assist and the game automatically lets all enemy effecting spells (Powers in CoH) hit that target. Any player effecting powers like heals will hit the player you target like normal. This works in reverse too you can heal the tank by targetting his target and try and heal it, the heal hits the tank instead. Travel Powers - One of the things I always hated about WoW, even after I got my mounts, was the time that it took to get from point to point. From level 14 all characters (apart from the heroic epic ATs who get a travel power at level 1) can access a fast travel power, two of these aren't great for Multi-Boxers, one is okay and one is amazing.
Super Speed - Is okay has no vertical movement built in, if you can control 5 warlocks on their ponies you'll have no issue with this. Super Jumping - Has plenty of vertical movement but normal run speed is unaffected, unless you can get all your clients to jump at the same time accurately its not worth bothering with Flight - The be all of travel powers for the multi-boxer (IMO) follow doesn't break on fly (even through death) and its easier to get around with than anything else, to make up for that its the slowest. Teleport - Fastest power be far, but usage is not really workable with a whole team, click casting for each jump essentially. However one of its precursors is a friendly teleport which can summon team mates within a fairly long range to your side. And the level 20 power from this set will allow you to move the whole team, which is a definate bonus even though its costs more endurance (Mana) and moves a shorter distance per hop. Bigger Teams - While the use of raid groups is not currently active (a bugged and removed Epic Raid allowed 25 players at a time IIRC) all content can be played through on eight man teams. Easier Mobs - Generally each mob in WoW is worth about 5 mobs in CoH... however you will get all five. :) On an eight man team instance maps are packed with mobs. Instanced Content - 90% of the game takes place in instanced maps, which means no-one will grief you or kill hard to find mobs. However it does mean that Zones often appear far emptier than would be the case in WoW. Large Range of Classes - You have two games in effect, both games (City of Heroes & City of Villains) have 5 Normal Classes (Archetypes) plus two epic archetypes. (The epics are unlocked by hitting the level cap on a per account basis.) Some of those classes are not much crack for Multi-Boxing because they are melee and its far harder to work that way, others more than make up for the fact. Teaming is positively encouraged, even in a duo you get more than solo XP/Mob because all teams get an XP bonus for teaming, obviously the bigger the team the bigger the bonus.
Cons:
Characters Don't Stack - Might seem an odd thing for a WoW player but every NPC and PC has their own hit box and that is inviable, if you have a full team of eight they take up lots of space, worse player pets also have that same hit box and while they can be shoved around (NPCs/PCs can't) on a team with Master Minds who can have more than six pets even running down a corridor can get difficult. Mastermind Targetting - The above mentioned Pro about targetting doesn't work for a MMs pets, these must be sent to attack with an assist, its perfectly doable but not as easy. Virtually No End Game - CoH/CoV caps at level 50 and once you reach that point there isn't a whole lot to do besides roll another character (or 8) and work through the content again. PvP - PvP exists in game and is not great, though I don't partake so I'm not the best person to ask. Multi-boxing will not make you a PWNMBL... Extremely hard to play multiple clients on a single machine. Don't get me wrong you can run more than one client per machine, my own can run three and its not the best around. But actually controlling all three with out alt tabbing is impossible (for me). I have Keyclone and that doesn't work, I have tried most of the tools listed in the software section and none worked on a single machine. I wish more people Multi-Boxed the game as then I have no doubt some code Monkey would work it out. :)
I currently use Octopus between two machines (I only dual box) it works great, I'd like a Round Robin mode but buggers can't be choosers. ;)
If you already have a multi PC setup for WoW moving to CoH is no hardship! Scripting/Macros - While you can creat some quite complicated Macros/Binds in game they are far less powerful than those found in WoW. And there is virtually no UI customisation. Instanced Content - 90% of the game takes place in instanced maps, which means no-one will grief you or kill hard to find mobs. However it does mean that Zones often appear far emptierthan would be the case in WoW. (Yes its its not 100% a pro. :()
As I said I play two characters at once, most of the content I have done is what you can do solo, mainly as most of the specifically group content isn't possible for a duo. :( I have dual-boxed all the non-melee heroic archetypes and capped out on one, with some interest I could run with some more, but getting bored with CoH and am planning to return to WoW. Unless I get a job and can afford another PC/Account and can try triple boxing. :)

Just to add I play on the EU server Defiant, the EU servers are arguably less populated than the US servers :( however time for time the Peaks in the EU is roughly similar on most servers to the US (eg @7pm EU the population on most US servers is lower than in EU, and @US 7pm nobody in EU is awake... ;))

Trials can be had for both EU & US, they are fairly restrictive to prevent RMT spam, but the game can be got for the price of a months sub, (and you can cap out in that time if you play hard) so that is also worth looking at. Trial accounts cannot form teams, you can be invited by an existing player but trials cannot invite anyone new. :( You also can't chat to other players except in local chat so making contact with someone to make your team will be hard too.

[tym733]

Lost Ninja you brought back lots of memory, I used to play a defender on the US Justice sever. I find it very easier to heal in CoH, but in WoW you really need skill. Super speed is one of my favourite travel skill, cant beat it. :D

[bigp3rm]

No.

[Alvdraken]

I spend most of my day 3 or 4-boxing CoH or CoV, it is great fun :-) But what Lost Ninja says is true

[Frosty]

I spend most of my day 3 or 4-boxing CoH or CoV, it is great fun :-) But what Lost Ninja says is trueWhat software are you using? Or are you hardware boxing it?

[Frosty]

I currently use Octopus between two machines (I only dual box) it works great,

Sooooo.. anyone been able to get any other solutions to work? I'm interesed in double-boxing this until I can get a new PC.

[Frosty]

As an update if anyone else is interested. I was able to get HotKeyNet working on 2 PCs each running 1 copy of CoH/CoV.

This is the code that made it work (pulled from the hotkeynet.com forums):



<hotkey 1>
<sendpc 192.168.1.1>
<SendFocusWin>
<key 1>


Note: the IP is the address of the computer you want to send the key too. You might also want to add more tags to the code like Passthrough (I think that's right?) to make it send to the local PC too.

[Lost Ninja]

Use octopus, you don't need to write complicated AHK scripts, it works out of the box for multiple PCs.

And the signature is horrible, smaller font please.