ArcheAge Founder's Packs Available

[MiRai]

Not sure if anyone's looking forward to this game, and while the packs have been available for 48 hours now, I just got the e-mail. The game is a Korean MMO, but Trion is helping release an English version of it (no idea if that includes Europe or not). I've also no idea if multiboxing is allowed, let alone feasible, in this game.

http://www.archeagegame.com/en/news/2014/04/archeage-founders-packs-now-available/

http://www.archeagegame.com/en/shop/

[zenga]

That looked like a really interesting game. Until I checked what the founder packs really were about ... there are credits you can buy with irl money to spend ingame, then there are some sort of disenchanting tokens again available with irl money, and some teleporting tokens, same deal. Seems like the pinnacle of a pay to win game to me.

[Lax]

It may not be possible to multibox this game, so be aware before buying :)

From Prepared, at http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5663#p26367

There is a follow keybind in game. And there is a /target command. The follow keybind will work for a party or raid. From an multiboxing standpoint, the game can be multiboxed, however there is one big problem. XLGames made the game which is Korean based. They use Hackshield (Korean based) that is launched when the game launches

[pox67]

Hackshield is causing a LOT of hassles for people and doesn't seem compatible with some antivirus programs.

I wonder if Trion will ditch Hackshield for its release.

[MiRai]

That looked like a really interesting game. Until I checked what the founder packs really were about ... there are credits you can buy with irl money to spend ingame, then there are some sort of disenchanting tokens again available with irl money, and some teleporting tokens, same deal. Seems like the pinnacle of a pay to win game to me.
I agree that the whole 'credits' thing turns me off as well and I, personally, would approach this game with caution since I'm not a fan of P2W.


Hackshield is causing a LOT of hassles for people and doesn't seem compatible with some antivirus programs.

I wonder if Trion will ditch Hackshield for its release.
Besides Lineage 2, I can't think of an Asian MMO that was popular in the U.S. (or was picked up by a well-known company and marketed to be popular in the U.S.) which kept its anti-hack software when it was brought here. Aion and TERA are two games from Korea that still use GameGuard in Korea, but neither game launched here with that terrible software. I would imagine that Trion won't use such software in the English version, but only those in the alpha or on the alpha forums can find out this information. /shrug

[pox67]

P2W never really bothers me apart from being an indicator of a subpar game.
I rarely ever get to max level and never PVP so don't care too much what other people do with their time in the game. As long as they aren't using teleporting harvest bots, ahem ESO...

A bigger problem with Archeage at the moment is that it doesn't have mouse invert, well for me at least.

I asked about Hackshield but I doubt they can give an answer at this point.

[Mercbeast]

I've been in the closed alpha since the Friends and Family stage (I got bro's that work at Trion). I've posed some tentative questions about Hackshield but have heard nothing back. Isboxer absolutely does not work currently. Other than that, the game is absolutely perfect for multiboxing. It has autofollow, it has the requirements for assisting, it has click to move (would make melee teams work fine because you will auto run into range/face the target to use a skill).

I know that people CAN box this game with keyclone but I personally haven't run Keyclone since probably 2006 (before I found ISboxer) and after the ease of use and flexibility of ISboxer I don't think I could bring myself to work with Keyclone. If anyone does the legwork for keyclone though by all means post your settings up please! ;p

[pox67]

I asked on the Alpha forums if Hackshield would in at release.
Got a response that it is easy to circumvent and a lot of people complaining about it.

There is a lot of rage on the forums about Hackshield. Just about anything on the computer can set it off. For me it was Webroot antivirus and the game would exit every 2 - 3 minutes. If I disable my AV it the game works fine.

There are still quite a few bugs but if they got rid of Hackshield things would be much better. At the moment they are using an older code of the game so it is very ping dependent, living in Australia I have a bad ping so can't spam DPS skills as fast as others with low pings. This is apparently fixed in the Russian version though.

I was pretty cranky by the time I finished fixing the crashes and got the game working last night but it all went away once I started playing. Can't put my finger on anything but the game just sucks you in. It is the little things like consumable drinks that are on barrels near NPCs, these give you a 30 second strength buff so you run much faster or fight much better. Little things that make the world feel really fleshed out. And I know I passed a lot of things that I want to go back and see what they do.
Then my character levelled to 5 and I could open up a new class, I was an archer and then picked witch...so a bow wielding witch. I like it. And the skills all kind of work off each other. I had two bow skills, one that snared and if I use the second ability the snare is increased. I picked up a witch ability that works off the increased snare and roots and dots the mob.

Being an old and jaded gamer I was surprised when I woke up early to play the game before work. And waking early for me is 5am as I leave at 6 for work!

[Mercbeast]

I asked on the Alpha forums if Hackshield would in at release.
Got a response that it is easy to circumvent and a lot of people complaining about it.

There is a lot of rage on the forums about Hackshield. Just about anything on the computer can set it off. For me it was Webroot antivirus and the game would exit every 2 - 3 minutes. If I disable my AV it the game works fine.

There are still quite a few bugs but if they got rid of Hackshield things would be much better. At the moment they are using an older code of the game so it is very ping dependent, living in Australia I have a bad ping so can't spam DPS skills as fast as others with low pings. This is apparently fixed in the Russian version though.

I was pretty cranky by the time I finished fixing the crashes and got the game working last night but it all went away once I started playing. Can't put my finger on anything but the game just sucks you in. It is the little things like consumable drinks that are on barrels near NPCs, these give you a 30 second strength buff so you run much faster or fight much better. Little things that make the world feel really fleshed out. And I know I passed a lot of things that I want to go back and see what they do.
Then my character levelled to 5 and I could open up a new class, I was an archer and then picked witch...so a bow wielding witch. I like it. And the skills all kind of work off each other. I had two bow skills, one that snared and if I use the second ability the snare is increased. I picked up a witch ability that works off the increased snare and roots and dots the mob.

Being an old and jaded gamer I was surprised when I woke up early to play the game before work. And waking early for me is 5am as I leave at 6 for work!

Ya, it's fun. It's definitely a step in the right direction in the "themepark" style of games. The best description for it is probably "themebox" or "sandpark". I wish ships were handled differently though. I wish you could actually lose your ship if it was stolen or destroyed (not the blue print, so you could just go plunk down some more materials and build a new one without too much fuss).

A few more changes need to come into the game. We've gotten some of the 1.0 version balance changes but not all of them. The biggest one IMO that needs to come next is the HP boost. Right now I run around with about 9k hp self buffed, I'm running basically the tankiest build in the game. Several guys in my guild can one shot me in the right circumstances. In 1.0 one of the changes KR has is roughly doubled HP with no increase in player DPS.

The game is also not balanced in the slightest way around 1v1. Builds basically break down into very hard counters.

The game is also pretty much broken down at this point to what class combinations work best. As an archer, your best builds are going to look like Archer/Shadowplay/Auramancy or maybe Battlerage. Lot of the classes have very specific primary support classes for synergy. Splitting magic and physical damage doesn't tend to work well late game due to stat requirements. One exception is Occultism which has very low magic attack modifiers and high base damage. So you can to an extent get away with stacking a physical DPS class with occultism since you can rely simply on the high base stats for occultism. Occultism however is more of a support role dealing mostly with disables and stuff like that versus raw damage output.

For PvP, Auramancy is almost a must. It has your CC breaks and immunities. If you don't take Auramancy, Defense is a pretty important role for the passive defensive boosts it gives you. With TTK in PvP in this game, without CC breaks, or without defensive passives you're going to get gibbed by people. Even my build which runs Occultism, Auramancy and Defence I can get insta gibbed by a couple classes or just blown up through a single stun/knock down chain.

[harvan]

archage is not going to be boxable me and prepared got a official lead gm response-

Thank you for contacting us regarding ArcheAge.

RIFT is an entirely different game and therefore has different policies. While we will not get into the specifics of why it is against policy, all you need to know is that it is, and any instances we find of someone multiboxing in ArcheAge will be actioned.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let us know. Thank you for your continued support of Trion Worlds and for playing ArcheAge.

[Lyonheart]

archage is not going to be boxable me and prepared got a official lead gm response-

Ill never understand that! Its a business.. and its one that depends on sales and continued revenue to survive. And im pretty sure investors would disagree with decisions like that " Im sorry investors, we feel multiboxing gives an unfair advantage in our make believe fantasy world, so we have outlawed it!." ...Investors " Umm.. so we have people that want to buy MULTIPLE copies of this game were all trying to make money on, and then they want to pay MULTIPLE monthly subscriptions for lord knows how long? And you devs want to keep that from happening? ARE YOU STUPID!!??!.. YOUR FIRED!!!"

hehe.. thats my view on it.. as a business man myself.

[pox67]

I thought it was totally unboxable until they get rid of Hackshield which they are being very quiet on...

EDIT: spelling

[zenga]

Ill never understand that! Its a business.. and its one that depends on sales and continued revenue to survive. And im pretty sure investors would disagree with decisions like that " Im sorry investors, we feel multiboxing gives an unfair advantage in our make believe fantasy world, so we have outlawed it!." ...Investors " Umm.. so we have people that want to buy MULTIPLE copies of this game were all trying to make money on, and then they want to pay MULTIPLE monthly subscriptions for lord knows how long? And you devs want to keep that from happening? ARE YOU STUPID!!??!.. YOUR FIRED!!!"

hehe.. thats my view on it.. as a business man myself.

Maybe their judgement is such that boxing influences the experience of more people negatively than the extra copies they can sell? Or that it is just easier in general to not allow boxing (load on customer support should be way less i can imagine).

[Lyonheart]

Maybe their judgement is such that boxing influences the experience of more people negatively than the extra copies they can sell? Or that it is just easier in general to not allow boxing (load on customer support should be way less i can imagine).


I understand that argument.. and it might be true for PvP..less so for PvE. But yea, im sure thats why.. all the crying takes it toll.

[Ishar]

I wonder if there is really any quantified effect of boxing overall. Sure the occasional guy gets toasted and angry over it but I don't recall ever hearing of boxers totally dominating any competitive pvp thing. Maybe in open world pvp. Assuming a depleted player base or lack of in faction coordination. My assumption is that the negative impact of boxers is entirely internal, e.g. Little Timmy has two toys I want two toys mommy. What do you mean I have to put out effort for two toys Timmy didn't. Can't win that argument but still you would think companies would side with greed if not bothering to record and analyze some statistics.

I can see the csr angle but you can offload some of that to the community for basically free.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

[Meeo]

Their Q&A - Multiboxing was brought up. 1 Client per computer, limitation of game. Multiple Machines, they allow multiple account ownership. 3rd Party Software to control multiple character is not allowed.

Just after 48:40 min - http://www.twitch.tv/trionworlds/b/529118204

I unfortunately will be running a pocket healer/farmer account plus my main account for this game.

[MiRai]

Their Q&A - Multiboxing was brought up. 1 Client per computer, limitation of game. Multiple Machines, they allow multiple account ownership. 3rd Party Software to control multiple character is not allowed.

Just after 48:40 min - http://www.twitch.tv/trionworlds/b/529118204

I unfortunately will be running a pocket healer/farmer account plus my main account for this game.
I'd say that's open to interpretation. :)

Right before (@ 47:40), the woman first mentions botting and says that it's bad to use botting software (duh). Then she addresses multiboxing where she says...

1) The limitation of the game client only allows for one instance to run on a computer at once.

I highly doubt that this limitation exists solely because of multiboxers. There are many games that we all multibox which can only run one game client per computer, but it's gotten around, with no modification to the game client, through application-level virtualization.

Many games that are created in Asia come standard with launchers that we in the states would never tolerate. For example, when I played the Korean version of Blade & Soul I had to first log into a website (http://bns.plaync.com/), which at the time seemed to only like Internet Explorer because it uses some weird asian addon application for the browser, which would then launch a launcher to check your files and look for updates, and then you could launch the game and play. God forbid you ever got DC'd from the game and had to do all of that over again.

I don't know how the Asian game client of ArcheAge is launched, but I can imagine that the "one game client per computer" is just a limitation left over from crazy Asian game launching traditions. To add to this, after the multiboxing bit the guy (sitting next to the woman) talks about how the game doesn't even have borderless windowed mode (AKA Windowed (Fullscreen)), but they want to bring it to the game and they're working on it. HTF does something like that not exist in the game already? :confused:

Either way, I can't imagine that people won't find ways to run multiple clients on a single machine even if it's just to sit on a bank alt at the auction house while they play their main... Because when it really comes down to it... What's the difference whether you've got your bank alt sitting on a laptop next to you or you're running both of those clients on a single machine? Nothing.

2) "As long as you, the human being, are controlling all of those accounts, that's fine."

The above is a direct quote from the woman in the video. She then goes on to say that fingers, and toes ("if you're really, really creative"), are the only acceptable means of playing your characters. To me, that sounds like the definition of allowing multiboxing, but during all of this she also says:

"If you're using third-party tools, you're botting, we ban you. No software."

I don't know if she's just referring back to the previous statement she made about botting software (specifically) being bad, or whether she's throwing every piece of third-party software into a big pool of "bannable offense," which, we should all know, is nonsense.

The thing that gets me about statements like this is that they don't say you can't use hardware to multibox, when most of us know that hardware multiboxing was, and could still very well be, a thing. You don't need software to send keystrokes or mouse movements across your computers, but software has become so much easier (and cheaper) to use that we've mostly all just migrated that way.

Ultimately, how would they know the difference if you just set up your characters to have a bit of a (manual) delay between their actions through multiple steps using software to mimic moving from input device to input device? Answer -- They wouldn't. That's why allowing multiple clients and having these weird restrictions and convoluted guidelines is... confusing and even dumb in some cases. I understand it's their game and they can set whatever rules they want, but either it's allowed or it's not allowed.

However, I'm not suggesting that people start spending their money on multiple founder's packs in order to prepare for multiboxing or advocating that you are truly allowed to multibox based on my interpretation of what Trion said during that stream, but what they're saying just sounds uneducated (in the realm of multiboxing).

-----------------------

EDIT: After I began the stream over and actually listened, they mentioned in the beginning that ArcheAge is a heavy PvP oriented game. They also talk about castle sieges and what not, but now it makes sense why they wouldn't want multiboxers in such a type of game -- Especially with it being F2P. Nothing is stopping anyone from running a ton of accounts just so they can add numbers to their army to siege castles and fight battles.

[heffner]

Update from Trion: https://support.trionworlds.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/947/kw/multiboxing Basically, they won't allow controlling multiple characters using a single input device regardless of how it's accomplished.

[Mokoi]

I don't know how the Asian game client of ArcheAge is launched, but I can imagine that the "one game client per computer" is just a limitation left over from crazy Asian game launching traditions.

Korean games are all run through websites. You log into the website, and it launches the game for you. There are rarely executables here in Korea to launch things. It is a system designed to be internet cafe ready and pc-room friendly. Since 90%+ of gamers in Korea game at an internet cafe, this is the system adopted almost universally within Korean game developers. It is a HUGE pain in the ass, and a system no western audience wouldf ever put up with.

[Mosg2]

Well, what they said isn't actually outside the realm of doable if you're clever. Since they said you can have multiple characters online and following one character, the hard part is done. That's permission.

The restriction is that one keyboard button press or one mouse-click must equate to one single action on one single character, and each character needs to be controllable with its own respective keyboard and mouse. It also doesn't say that you can't use 3rd party software to launch a game window, just that each character must be controllable without using it.

Soooooo. Those're the restrictions. The first thing that comes to mind is a virtual KVM switch, since swapping is instant. Second is multiple numpads with a wooden dowel across each "row" of buttons. Third is uh, not allowed as a discussable item on the forums?

Yeah, the mini-numpads with a dowel seems pretty sweet. Since you can set all of your guys up to follow your main outside of combat, you then just have to worry about a mashable dps button while in combat. Does the game auto-assist to a friendly character if you cast a hostile action on them?

[Lax]

Well, what they said isn't actually outside the realm of doable if you're clever. Since they said you can have multiple characters online and following one character, the hard part is done. That's permission.

The restriction is that one keyboard button press or one mouse-click must equate to one single action on one single character, and each character needs to be controllable with its own respective keyboard and mouse. It also doesn't say that you can't use 3rd party software to launch a game window, just that each character must be controllable without using it.
That's what they say, but the reality is that in games with this sort of rule you're immediately suspect if you're multiboxing at all. You're at risk of being banned based on player reports simply for appearing a certain way. They also cannot tell the difference between whether you're using a hardware setup or a software setup if your keystrokes appear to be synchronized, and it wont matter if you're using a round-robin sort of setup either.

See Guild Wars 2 for example.

[Mosg2]

Mmmm. What I'm thinking is this:

You can setup follow before you go out and about, so you don't need a "quick" solution for it.

For combat, a roundrobin key that sends once to each window. As long as you spam it fast enough there shouldn't really be a dps loss. That falls within the guidelines they posted, from a detectability standpoint. Right question mark?