CCP prohibiting input broadcasting/multiplexing beginning January 2015

[Crayonbox]

Woah, sleep and a day at work, I really don't want to read the crap that I posted, because I'm sure that its going to embarrass me. Rather I'll clarify points that are being quoted because I think I can at least manage that.


The reason I, myself, got into multiboxing is the problem solving aspect of multiboxing excites me. A way to efficiently multibox and approach the game in a manner that the average player does not even consider.

That challenge has been eroded somewhat since the introduction of key duplication.

In no way am I saying there is a loophole or a workaround to the current plan on banning key duplication in all its forms. What I am saying, is that there are other methods of multiboxing, a la alt tab, and creative methods around its usage to aid multiboxers. As Ugh has stated, it may not be as easy or efficient as key duplication, but the multiboxing community is resourceful. There will be people who will try and push the envelope as far as humanly possible without breaking rules. Or at least attempting to bend them, as I've seen players do.

The notion that players can persuade CCP to leave multiboxers alone is a bit naive. If CCP decides not to go through with this chance, they will come down even harder on multiboxers. Limit concurrent clients or ban any third party software completely.

We as multiboxers are a SMALL niche community. There are FAR more single or 2-3 client players that will not hesitate to throw our community under the bus. The constant whining and bitching on public forums about our gameplay style does not help our group at all. The reason for these forums was to bring together our small group of players and allow us to share our thoughts and resources. If people are constantly cross posting our forums to the outside, we lose our haven. Our constant bitching and whining is inviting more trolls to troll us. There is nothing more satisfying for those idiots than to troll people that fall straight into their trolling.

Does this mean we should take this lying down? Hell no. Any breach into our game style is going to invite more, the appropriate way to handle these events is to get in contact with the people that are in charge and discuss this civilly. Angry mob mentality does nothing to help our cause. Talk to GMs, talk to devs, talk to Lax. DO NOT BITCH but have good discussions about the topic.

Another thing NOT to do. Going around every forum explaining workarounds and bragging about how this doesn't affect you and how you can work around it publicly. Again, all this does is attract more negative attention and give the solo players something else to unite and raise their pitch forks over. This can totally be avoided. Take a look at what happened with the cloaking changes. CCP was going to re-introduce a cloaking bug where cloaked ships decloaked each other. This was a stupid change that was aimed specifically at ISBoxer bombers where the problem was. This was a stupid change , and all the players knew it and even the multiboxers ran around screaming how this would change nothing and how they can avoid it easily. Thus, we have the new change in CCP's stance on key duplication.

CCP WANTS to nerf how many clients people can multibox. They are OK with the 5-10 clients people are running. They jsut don't want it to get out of hand like replicator who is obviously abusing the whole thing.

As for my personal stance on these changes, I am not a fan, but I see the need for these changes to be introduced to Eve. As a multiboxer, this will hurt a bit and will cause me to shrink down my accounts from 12 to about 7. However, As a player of Eve who would like this game to continue to grow and be healthy, I think these changes will benefit the community by cutting out the idiots that abuse this community and cause for shitty gaming experience for average players.

[Alex66]

Good post, Crayonbox. At least now I understand what you were trying to say in the one before (I was under impression you were saying "learn Isboxer, because input broadcasting can be replaced by equally efficient other features in it"). I apologize if I sounded offensive replying to it.

I guess there are different groups of multiboxers in each game - one that grew into boxing a certain game from solo, and one that came into the same game with full team. I am from the latter group in Eve - the game has zero interest to me as solo player, as is going beyond my 5 accounts while boxing. The change affects us somewhat differently too - I view it as a backstab, given that it was very clearly articulated by CCP in the past that input multiplexing is perfectly fine. Can I still box my 5 accounts come Jan 1? Yes. But it will not be the gameplay I came for, and if I decide to quit, it will be with anger at CCP for making me waste time and money because I'd not be nowhere even close to what my plans were in this game.

I only post multiboxer related stuff on this forum and isboxer one, and I never ever tell people in-game that I multibox. I had my share of grief from players in other games. But I feel each of us deserve to let his/her opinion known on this forum too.

Edit: on CCP stance in the past:
http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=to...1414934473#274

"Lastly, multiboxing is allowed, and programs designed for multiboxing in mind which allow a player to manually issue the same command to multiple game clients at the same time are allowed. In the same vein as what has been stated above, the player must be manually sending the commands; if a program is automating those commands for you, then it would be considered a breach of our EULA."

So, no -they were very explicit about input multiplexing, it was ALLOWED, they were not turning blind eye on it as you say.

[giryan]

Something that I missed about that post initially, and only spotted this morning was the bit directly above the quote you've excerpted:

The old, out of date, post can be seen below as it originally appeared:

So, since GM Lelouch made that addition, in Feb 2013, that's not been the case, and they have been letting it happen it even though they no longer explicitly allowed it.

[Crayonbox]

That post by GM Lelouch has been the bane of CCP since this entire issue has been brought up haha.

GMs do not have the authority to really say what is allowed and what isnt. they merely enforce the "law". They are more like the police. The devs are more like the supreme court and legislature all rolled into one. They are the ones with the absolute power over what is and isnt allowed.

That post has been clarified over and over in following posts about how its still not endorsed or "allowed" per se by CCP but they are are not enforcing said rule. Due to legal reasons, they never say it in those words specifically, but thats the gist of it.

[Alex66]

To my knowledge, CCP has not withrawn Lelouch's statement in the past, they just issued qualifiers. Essentially in lawyer talk I think it means his statement on core input multiplexing is still true. Look at wording of this statement in the latest announcement, they "limit" the use of input broadcasting, rather than "allow" it:

Starting from 01.01.2015 the use of Input Broadcasting and Input Multiplexing is limited to activities which do not impact the Eve universe,

True, they have full rights to change the rules as thy see fit, but I am baffled why some people on this forum appear to defend them and their actions.

"Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" is a constitutional principle of English law — an essential freedom of the ordinary citizen.

The jocular saying is that, in England, "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", while, in Germany, the opposite applies, so "everything which is not allowed is forbidden". This may be extended to France — "everything is allowed even if it is forbidden"^[5] — and Russia where "everything is forbidden, even that which is expressly allowed".^[6]

... I must be one weird Russian, lol.

P.S. I am also curious how CCP is going to handle false postives arising from fleet warps (as someone on the EVE boards asked https://forums.eveonline.com/default...91#post5262891). While it is not input broadcasting, clients will simultaneously register a warp command from one IP, which should get alarm bells ringing at CCP's watchdog.

[Lax]

[quote]"Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" is a constitutional principle of English law — an essential freedom of the ordinary citizen.

The jocular saying is that, in England, "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", while, in Germany, the opposite applies, so "everything which is not allowed is forbidden". This may be extended to France — "everything is allowed even if it is forbidden"^[5] — and Russia where "everything is forbidden, even that which is expressly allowed".^[6]"

Uhh yeah, let us know when EVE is governed by constitutional principles of English law. It is not hard to defend a company that is making changes to try to improve the game, particularly when certain multiboxers have been specifically abusing what they were allowed to do.

P.S. I am also curious how CCP is going to handle false postives arising from fleet warps (as someone on the EVE boards asked https://forums.eveonline.com/default...91#post5262891). While it is not input broadcasting, clients will simultaneously register a warp command from one IP, which should get alarm bells ringing at CCP's watchdog.

The only false positive you can expect from fleet warps is from player reports, and once they realize they're an idiot for reporting that, they probably won't do it again. It is common knowledge that one person can warp the fleet using functionality built into the game.

[Alex66]

It is not hard to defend a company that is making changes to try to improve the game, particularly when certain multiboxers have been specifically abusing what they were allowed to do.

If someone abuses the rules, make new rules that target abusers, not all populace. CCP is making changes that certainly do not improve the game for me as 5-man boxer, quite the opposite. Besides, one can argue that any game is better off without multiboxers, but developers tolerate us because we bring additional income. There is sort of fragile "understanding" between us, and in case of EVE it is at risk now, arguably because some boxers were abusing the rules, I do not dispute that. Still, I am sure they could have thought of solutions other than outright ban on input multiplexing.

[bugme143]

If someone abuses the rules, make new rules that target abusers, not all populace. CCP is making changes that certainly do not improve the game for me as 5-man boxer, quite the opposite. Besides, one can argue that any game is better off without multiboxers, but developers tolerate us because we bring additional income. There is sort of fragile "understanding" between us, and in case of EVE it is at risk now, arguably because some boxers were abusing the rules, I do not dispute that. Still, I am sure they could have thought of solutions other than outright ban on input multiplexing.

Exactly.
Took some time to browse the F&I forum to find a lot of posts regarding ideas on how to balance multiboxing and EVE. I grouped them into "Mining (ice, ore, gas), Anoms+Missions, Incursions, PvP, and Bombing.

Anoms+Missions had the fewest threads regarding ISBoxers, since any idiot can toss an AFKTar into a Sanctum and earn 60m isk/hour or whatever it is, and multibox missioning, even L5, is garbage income.
Next fewest was PvP, but most of it was filled with ISBoxer gank fluff complaining that their Fenrir with 20b in modules was ganked, followed by just about everyone in the thread saying that they would've been ganked even if we limited EVE to 1 client / computer.
Next was mining. A lot of interesting ideas, ranging from increased rat spawns and toughness and re-balance the bounties, to minigames on lasers. My personal favorites was Minigames on the lasers (reduce m3 amount, add minigame to reward non-afkers with extra yield/faster cycles) and one oddball suggestion (not in the forums, in mining chat) to implement a "interference" modifier to mining lasers so that you start to hit diminishing returns once you get to 50+ on a belt.
Next was incursions. Lots of complaints about boxers, but lots of rebuttals regarding training time, risk and numbers, and false comparisons (e.g. comparing BNI to PL or BL). One thing I did like was a reduction of ISK payouts and an increase in LP payouts, requiring a player to "work harder" for his full ISK return, just like the ESS idea for nullsec (on the record, I still thing the ESS was retarded, but I do enjoy the BRs of the carebears defending it).
Then, bombing. Fairly certain this was the largest of the groups because of the latest issue with the (supposedly (lolright)) reimbursed Rorqual. Lots of ideas, ranging from un-reversing the decloak change (remember when the boxers told CCP it wouldn't work?), to removing bombs (wasn't the rorq killed by torps only?), to some decent ideas such as increasing sig radius of bombers, or reducing agility again. My favorite was implementing a 4-digit arming-code that must be entered when a bomb is in space in order for it to explode. As for the issue with torps being unbalanced on stealth bombers, there isn't really much that CCP can do in my eyes besides increasing align time or increasing sig-rad to help "balance" them, and even then, I'd be skeptical as I've seen first-hand the effectiveness of insta-canes and Zealots used in anti-bomber roles, and I've seen them slowly disappear.

CCP wants to be taken seriously in the MMO world, but changes like the latest announcement remind everyone of the GTA V thing where a small bunch of vocal wingnuts got Target to pull the game after lying through their teeth in the petition article.

[pinotnoir]

Exactly.
Took some time to browse the F&I forum to find a lot of posts regarding ideas on how to balance multiboxing and EVE. I grouped them into "Mining (ice, ore, gas), Anoms+Missions, Incursions, PvP, and Bombing.

Anoms+Missions had the fewest threads regarding ISBoxers, since any idiot can toss an AFKTar into a Sanctum and earn 60m isk/hour or whatever it is, and multibox missioning, even L5, is garbage income.
Next fewest was PvP, but most of it was filled with ISBoxer gank fluff complaining that their Fenrir with 20b in modules was ganked, followed by just about everyone in the thread saying that they would've been ganked even if we limited EVE to 1 client / computer.
Next was mining. A lot of interesting ideas, ranging from increased rat spawns and toughness and re-balance the bounties, to minigames on lasers. My personal favorites was Minigames on the lasers (reduce m3 amount, add minigame to reward non-afkers with extra yield/faster cycles) and one oddball suggestion (not in the forums, in mining chat) to implement a "interference" modifier to mining lasers so that you start to hit diminishing returns once you get to 50+ on a belt.
Next was incursions. Lots of complaints about boxers, but lots of rebuttals regarding training time, risk and numbers, and false comparisons (e.g. comparing BNI to PL or BL). One thing I did like was a reduction of ISK payouts and an increase in LP payouts, requiring a player to "work harder" for his full ISK return, just like the ESS idea for nullsec (on the record, I still thing the ESS was retarded, but I do enjoy the BRs of the carebears defending it).
Then, bombing. Fairly certain this was the largest of the groups because of the latest issue with the (supposedly (lolright)) reimbursed Rorqual. Lots of ideas, ranging from un-reversing the decloak change (remember when the boxers told CCP it wouldn't work?), to removing bombs (wasn't the rorq killed by torps only?), to some decent ideas such as increasing sig radius of bombers, or reducing agility again. My favorite was implementing a 4-digit arming-code that must be entered when a bomb is in space in order for it to explode. As for the issue with torps being unbalanced on stealth bombers, there isn't really much that CCP can do in my eyes besides increasing align time or increasing sig-rad to help "balance" them, and even then, I'd be skeptical as I've seen first-hand the effectiveness of insta-canes and Zealots used in anti-bomber roles, and I've seen them slowly disappear.

CCP wants to be taken seriously in the MMO world, but changes like the latest announcement remind everyone of the GTA V thing where a small bunch of vocal wingnuts got Target to pull the game after lying through their teeth in the petition article.

Mini game or diminishing returns on lasers is a terrible idea. You cannot afk while multiboxing mining. You have to constantly change lasers on different ice/rocks, jetcan your ore, and haul it. The only way you can afk mine is with 1 toon on a large rock. When I am in the ice belt with perfect boost "23second cycles" the ice dies fast and I am always changing targets. If they messed with that it would not only discourage multiboxers from mining it would piss off the solo players too.

[moog]

It is not hard to defend a company that is making changes to try to improve the game

Are they trying to improve the game?
Or are they just listening to the loudest gobshites on their forum, again?

I don't see anything in the announcement that explains *why* they are making this change?
https://forums.eveonline.com/default...posts&t=387571

particularly when certain multiboxers have been specifically abusing what they were allowed to do.

How is it abuse if it is allowed?

I'm not affected by this change, I stopped 11-boxing Eve when they fucked over ice mining last year.

However, I am appalled at this change.

Everyone goes on about how Eve is a sandbox but it seems you can't quite do anything you want in CCPs sandbox.

Eve has never been about fair fights. The gobshites whining about being ganked by a MB fleet are probably the same motherfuckers who will happily sit on a gate with a fleet and gank pilots just trying to pass through - how is that different? You're dead to the ships from X accounts whether they are being MultiBoxed or not?

Do I get compensation next time a multi-account fleet catches me at a gate? Hypothetical question, really, as I've only lost 2 ships to real people in all my years in Eve and I've never even shot at another person's ship (the only ship I ever killed was my own, when MB targetting went wrong!).

What about the arseholes who, with one account set up a buy order using the Margin Trading scam^H^H^H^H skill and with another advertise/sell the requested goods at OTT prices? That would appear to be multiple accounts having an impact on the EVE universe!

Eve is such a dichotomy - on the one hand it is an immensely addictive game which I keep coming back to whilst on the other it is full of the biggest bunch of cunts in the gaming environment, who I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire!