Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Rezz said:

If you can box a class at almost the same efficiency as someone playing it seriously, that's terrible class/game design.

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I wouldnt use boxing, nor botting, as a reference. At least not in this day and age.

The people boxing/botting in most games (FFXIV, WoW, etc) are doing so for resources, typically. The people boxing in games like EQ (or games that wish they were EQ, ie, Pantheon) are doing so for progression. There is a stark difference in utilization between the two.

Why would you not use those terms? Botting is using third party tools to automate repetitive activities in a game, and boxing is having a second (or multiple other tiered accounts) to fill a subset of class requirements that normally real players would play.

EQ (and games wanting to be EQ, including terrible design decisions) very heavily favor people boxing other accounts. There's nothing/little to bot, as content is mostly unsoloable, thus botting doesn't matter. Boxing, however, is a legit term.

You're apparently a game designer guy, Daidraco . Why would you not use these terms, and what terms would make more sense? Because the spirit behind those terms remains the same.

Boxing in Pantheon.

I didn't have the funds for 2 computer set ups back when EQ was in its prime, but I damn sure would have boxed a toon back then knowing what I know now. Having a pocket druid around back then would have made life spectacular. Even now after WoW has been out 15+ years, most of all my friends have a boxed priest to support their mains.

Rezz said:

The people boxing/botting in most games (FFXIV, WoW, etc) are doing so for resources, typically. The people boxing in games like EQ (or games that wish they were EQ, ie, Pantheon) are doing so for progression. There is a stark difference in utilization between the two.

Why would you not use those terms? Botting is using third party tools to automate repetitive activities in a game, and boxing is having a second (or multiple other tiered accounts) to fill a subset of class requirements that normally real players would play.

EQ (and games wanting to be EQ, including terrible design decisions) very heavily favor people boxing other accounts. There's nothing/little to bot, as content is mostly unsoloable, thus botting doesn't matter. Boxing, however, is a legit term.

You're apparently a game designer guy, Daidraco . Why would you not use these terms, and what terms would make more sense? Because the spirit behind those terms remains the same.

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I wasnt saying that different terms should be used, but that the ease and skill level of a game cannot be gauged off of how easy it is to bot, or multibox. Regardless of the difficulty of the content. What a player considers mundane, or repetitive varies widely. Like you said, collecting trade skill mats is probably the most common use, since it takes little to no skill to write a script for that. But there are far more people botting, using things like Combat Routines, or staying out of the bad in a raid, than you think.

Multiboxxing however, is a mixed bag. You can use the basic one that just mimics movement and actions, which is good for farmers and easy to maintain. But there are more sophisticated ones available that violate the hell out of WoW's NDA, and are probably more closely related to botting than not. Personally, I would rather see both parties, regardless of how light weight the program is, get banned.

After all that, my point was simply that you can bot / multibox anything.

Hateyou said:

My wife and I both played so when I'd be leveling a new character I'd just slide her keyboard over, /auto-follow, buff, and heal myself once in a while. all while watching a movie. That's kind of my argument against EQ didn't take a lot of skill. Just wasn't too difficult unless you were doing bleeding edge content for your level.

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To be fair, you can still do that in WoW. It just isnt needed cause you can face roll just about anything solo up until current level group content.

Im not being obtuse - EQ wasnt some pinnacle of skill. Just some of these examples are just bad comparisons to make. In retail, or hell P99, I still had only a handful of people that I would let into my groups. I guess the real obstacle to this conversation for me is that, well... I just knew so many more people that were just bad. Whether that was because they didnt know jack shit, didnt know their class, or had constant RL issues. But I can say the same thing for any other game Ive played and that may be my the root of my argument.

Daidraco said:

To be fair, you can still do that in WoW. It just isnt needed cause you can face roll just about anything solo up until current level group content.

Im not being obtuse - EQ wasnt some pinnacle of skill. Just some of these examples are just bad comparisons to make. In retail, or hell P99, I still had only a handful of people that I would let into my groups. I guess the real obstacle to this conversation for me is that, well... I just knew so many more people that were just bad. Whether that was because they didnt know jack shit, didnt know their class, or had constant RL issues. But I can say the same thing for any other game Ive played and that may be my the root of my argument.

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There's not a single game where that isn't true. There are a lot of factors at play for anyone who plays a game. Not everyone approaches it with the same interest, goals, or time.

I don't think anyone reasonable believes there's literally no skill in EQ (this site loves hyperbole) as long as you're having to interact, but more that any skill differentiators aren't as large as in other games or that knowledge matters far more.

Again, how is a low man AoW kill an example of high skill?

DickTrickle said:

There's not a single game where that isn't true. There are a lot of factors at play for anyone who plays a game. Not everyone approaches it with the same interest, goals, or time.

I don't think anyone reasonable believes there's literally no skill in EQ (this site loves hyperbole) as long as you're having to interact, but more that any skill differentiators aren't as large as in other games or that knowledge matters far more.

Again, how is a low man AoW kill an example of high skill?

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The fact that the majority of each tlp server, despite the gear and time and extensive knowledge, consistently fail to pull these off. You have countless iterations of nolife experts doing this content ad nauseum and failing spectacularly when they split kael down too far... while their rivals crush it with even less.

The simple fact that you have such a large number of players with as much or more time, knowledge, and access who routinely fall short of a few who succeed, and this happens consistently on repeat tlps, implies there must be something at play and it cannot be luck.

I think you overestimate how many people are 6x TLP players and the like.

There were a few strong exceptions, but for the most part p99ers were just downright terribad. Not even just at eq - they were bad at basic entry level shit like stream raiders. Mind blowingly stupid. The past 2ish years I've concluded that 90%+ of people who play emulated EQ should probably never take off their helmets.

Con IMO.

Same ultimate end but different path to get there, imo.

3k+ pages of rustle

Dad guild can't handle it