Multi Clienting? Multi Boxing? What would get me banned? What would not?

Pawain

popps said:

Feigr said:

popps said:

Lord_Frodo said:

keven2002 said:

Mariah said:

Multiboxing involves using a program to allow one keyboard/mouse to control multiple characters to do the same thing at the same time.

if F5 is the hotkey to cast ebolt at current target, then all controlled characters will do that when the player hits that key.

If you're doing different things with the characters, you're not multiboxing, you're multi clienting.

That's not totally true. You could be multiclienting (legal) while having all the accounts cast the same spell at the same target, as long as you are toggling between the accounts to hit F5.

What multiboxing is essentially is automated game play (ie you aren't even touching the keyboard for said account) while using mutliple accounts so that you don't have to toggle between the accounts.

Example: 

Multiclienting (legal): A sampire is swinging his axe at some boss and pressing the AI macro while also toggling over to a bard account to heal/cure the sampire (using a macro to cast spell & last target). The key here is that the player is toggling between accounts to press the macros.

Multiboxing (illegal): A sampire is swinging his axe at some boss while chaining AI also has a bard account to heal/cure the sampire automatically; ie the user doesn't need to hit any sort of heal/cure macro on the bard because it's done automatically.

That's a very basic example of something that might look very similar but one is legal and the other is illegal. The example above is pretty hard to spot the difference if the person is good at toggling back and forth.

Typically that's not what people do when they multibox though... at least that would be obvious to report. It's the 5-10 accounts all stacked on each other that automatically attack the any hostile while spam chaining AI almost instantly killing anything on the screen before you can even press a macro to target hostile.

LMAO  There is no way they will cast the same spell all at the SAME time your toggling will cause a delay from one client to the other I do not care how fast you think you are.

Hmmm... I wonder, if these Third Party unauthorized utilities for the UO Client, might allow, for each of the UO clients open, to enter a delay of X seconds for each of the clients so that the player still only presses 1 key to send the same exact Macro to all of the clients without having to toggle from one client to another only, the actions will not be at the exact same time for all of the opened client but there will be delays for them all so as to simulate the toggling of the various UO opened clients while, instead, that toggling did not take place as the Macro took care of it all....

And, because of the delay, if there was monitoring or a Game Master showing up, the player could say that it was not multi-boxing because of the delays but multi-clienting when, instead, the toggling across the various opened clients did not take place thanking to the macro having delays for each and every of the opened UO clients...

Just wondering whether this might or not be a "feature" of certain unauthorized Third Party utilities since I have no knowledge of them and so can't know for certain... but, one would guess, technically this, perhaps, could be at least a theoretical possibility... or it could not ?

You can do a delay.  It's not a Third Party Application for the UO Client.  A Key Cloning application has nothing to do with the UO client.  To the client it would just look like any other input coming from your operating system.  A lot of other games have this issue.  It's not traceable.  EDIT: Well, not directly traceable... I don't know what their data looks like, but I'd imagine there's some creative ways you could manually tell what's going on if you wanted to put in that level of effort one by one.

You can do a delay, but to do a delay and to move and to do it smoothly without looking like it is what it is would be quite a feat.

Also adding a delay and making all that happen would almost defeat the purpose.  It wouldn't make it inefficient, but it would definitely make it a lot less efficient.

Well, the delay would have the purpose to give"some" ground to say that it is multi-clienting (because claiming to be toggling through the various clients, hence the delays...) and not multi-boxing as it would look much like had the macro key controlled the various characters to act at the same one split moment...

It does not have to be a huge delay, 1 or 2 seconds could perhaps be enough, one could imagine, just to make room to say that there is toggling through the clients while, instead, there is not...

Sure, it would not be as efficient as having all characters act at once but one could imagine the lowered efficiency to have a purpose, of course, if a delay is technically possible with these Third Party utilities which, I do not know whether or not it is.

Bottom line is, to my opinion, that, if we want to get rid of all of these cheating methods, the one and only way, to my viewing, should be "self-shutting" the Ultima Online client when the use of unauthorized Third Party utilities is detected along withh running UO, rather then trying to patch up this or that unwanted use os these unauthorized Third Party utilities with restrictions or changes to game play that in the end affect and hurt more reglar players who do not use these Third Party utilities rather then those players who use them.

That is at least what my personal opinion about how this should be addressed is.

Again, you do not know what you are writing.  UO can not detect a utility program.  My programmable mouse and keyboard are utilities.   UO can not detect how the inputs are given to the client. It can not tell if it is my finger pressing a key or a utility inputting the key stroke.

You were already told it would be stupid for someone to delay actions.

The point is.  If someone is sitting at their computer station and watching their 5 monitors while whatever method is running UO, they can answer a GMs question.  The GM moves to the next ticket.  This is not 1999.  We play on computers that can do a lot more than they could when UO was new.

The name Multibox derived from the actual external hardware in a box that allowed you to press a key and the input went to multiple programs or in the olden days, multiple computers.  Now you can use an app or program to do that.

Feigr

popps said:

Feigr said:

popps said:

Lord_Frodo said:

keven2002 said:

Mariah said:

Multiboxing involves using a program to allow one keyboard/mouse to control multiple characters to do the same thing at the same time.

if F5 is the hotkey to cast ebolt at current target, then all controlled characters will do that when the player hits that key.

If you're doing different things with the characters, you're not multiboxing, you're multi clienting.

That's not totally true. You could be multiclienting (legal) while having all the accounts cast the same spell at the same target, as long as you are toggling between the accounts to hit F5.

What multiboxing is essentially is automated game play (ie you aren't even touching the keyboard for said account) while using mutliple accounts so that you don't have to toggle between the accounts.

Example: 

Multiclienting (legal): A sampire is swinging his axe at some boss and pressing the AI macro while also toggling over to a bard account to heal/cure the sampire (using a macro to cast spell & last target). The key here is that the player is toggling between accounts to press the macros.

Multiboxing (illegal): A sampire is swinging his axe at some boss while chaining AI also has a bard account to heal/cure the sampire automatically; ie the user doesn't need to hit any sort of heal/cure macro on the bard because it's done automatically.

That's a very basic example of something that might look very similar but one is legal and the other is illegal. The example above is pretty hard to spot the difference if the person is good at toggling back and forth.

Typically that's not what people do when they multibox though... at least that would be obvious to report. It's the 5-10 accounts all stacked on each other that automatically attack the any hostile while spam chaining AI almost instantly killing anything on the screen before you can even press a macro to target hostile.

LMAO  There is no way they will cast the same spell all at the SAME time your toggling will cause a delay from one client to the other I do not care how fast you think you are.

Hmmm... I wonder, if these Third Party unauthorized utilities for the UO Client, might allow, for each of the UO clients open, to enter a delay of X seconds for each of the clients so that the player still only presses 1 key to send the same exact Macro to all of the clients without having to toggle from one client to another only, the actions will not be at the exact same time for all of the opened client but there will be delays for them all so as to simulate the toggling of the various UO opened clients while, instead, that toggling did not take place as the Macro took care of it all....

And, because of the delay, if there was monitoring or a Game Master showing up, the player could say that it was not multi-boxing because of the delays but multi-clienting when, instead, the toggling across the various opened clients did not take place thanking to the macro having delays for each and every of the opened UO clients...

Just wondering whether this might or not be a "feature" of certain unauthorized Third Party utilities since I have no knowledge of them and so can't know for certain... but, one would guess, technically this, perhaps, could be at least a theoretical possibility... or it could not ?

You can do a delay.  It's not a Third Party Application for the UO Client.  A Key Cloning application has nothing to do with the UO client.  To the client it would just look like any other input coming from your operating system.  A lot of other games have this issue.  It's not traceable.  EDIT: Well, not directly traceable... I don't know what their data looks like, but I'd imagine there's some creative ways you could manually tell what's going on if you wanted to put in that level of effort one by one.

You can do a delay, but to do a delay and to move and to do it smoothly without looking like it is what it is would be quite a feat.

Also adding a delay and making all that happen would almost defeat the purpose.  It wouldn't make it inefficient, but it would definitely make it a lot less efficient.

Well, the delay would have the purpose to give"some" ground to say that it is multi-clienting (because claiming to be toggling through the various clients, hence the delays...) and not multi-boxing as it would look much like had the macro key controlled the various characters to act at the same one split moment...

It does not have to be a huge delay, 1 or 2 seconds could perhaps be enough, one could imagine, just to make room to say that there is toggling through the clients while, instead, there is not...

Sure, it would not be as efficient as having all characters act at once but one could imagine the lowered efficiency to have a purpose, of course, if a delay is technically possible with these Third Party utilities which, I do not know whether or not it is.

Bottom line is, to my opinion, that, if we want to get rid of all of these cheating methods, the one and only way, to my viewing, should be "self-shutting" the Ultima Online client when the use of unauthorized Third Party utilities is detected along with running UO, rather then trying to patch up this or that unwanted use of these unauthorized Third Party utilities with restrictions or changes to game play that in the end affect and hurt more regular players who do not use these Third Party utilities rather then those players who use them.

That is at least what my personal opinion about how this should be addressed is.

I appreciate you having an opinion on it popps and we both do agree that it's a frustrating problem.  I only sought to try to explain so you don't end up more frustrated.  I do not feel that Broadsword can meet this expectation you're setting up for them.

It's a longer topic than this, but some people actually advocate for things others consider cheating.  They consider it being less skillful at the game if you're not doing your best to play the game efficiently.  This is not a unique problem to UO. 

When you have a new project in game, you try to figure it out within the context of what the game allows you to do.  They see that as being worse at the game.  They try to figure out within the context of tools, game, and other external factors like money.  They see this as being good at the game.

An example from other games would be aim bots for first person shooters.  If you want to be the best player you have to use an aim bot.  Players that aren't using an aim bot simply aren't trying to do their best to these players.  It's not a good thing to them to not want to use the aim bot.  They just tell them they aren't trying or teaching themselves the best way to do it.

An example in game that I find personally annoying is Pincos.  Everyone advocates for Pincos.  Well, many of us were playing when Pincos was not as widely known.  To me it was cheating.  If I were to PVP a player with Pincos and I wasn't using Pincos, was I really even trying? They could do things much faster than I could.  It became a requirement to have this tool outside of the game.

It's the exact same thing.

A very famous UO player that is very high up in status on another site related to UO even advocates for spending cash on items in game.  They are a big rare collector as well.  Their logic is that if they have to work rather than play the game for 10 hours to collect, they should be able to spend the money earned while working to get the items from the game.  I consider that cheating.  They consider it being better at the game.  Am I even trying if I don't want to spend real money?  That's the benchmark to these players.  Are you really trying?

keven2002

Lord_Frodo said:

LMAO  There is no way they will cast the same spell all at the SAME time your toggling will cause a delay from one client to the other I do not care how fast you think you are.

I'm not talking about the same spell with the exact (down to the millisecond) timing. I haven't really seen people multiboxing with multiple mages casting something like ebolt because that doesn't make sense; it's much more damage per second & gives survivability to use warriors...it's basically unlimited mana too. I was talking more hypothetical based on Mariah's comment.

The other key thing I think you missed was that I was talking specifically to multi-clienting only 2 screens. I do this all the time with my tamer and bard when doing Lady Mel. I swap between my 2 clients and pressing my <greater heal + last target> macro and take my cu from half HP to full HP in no time. Again my chars aren't casting heal at the exact same millisecond but it's damn close because it only takes me a millisecond to toggle between screens. It takes me like .02 seconds to click between screens to initiate my macro before I toggle back and press the same macro. Come to ATL if you don't believe me.

It's the same for my bard + sampire; I can swap between screens in milliseconds to press my macros (Sampire - AI & Bard - Spell + last target) to the point where by the time I'm getting my spell off my Sampire is usually landing AI and I'm hitting the AI macro again. What I'm doing isn't that far out of the realm of possibility... but again I'm talking 2 clients. That said, if you watch me for a few minutes you will see my human error where the bard will heal my sampire when he's at full HP sometimes and sometimes I untoggle my AI (usually because I've missed a swing).

At the end of the day I'm not arguing multiboxing & multiclienting will be the EXACT same speed but I know from my own game play that it's very similar (toggling 2 clients) to multiboxing if you are just staying stationary only pressing 1 macro. When you start adding movement and dependency type actions (and are seamlessly executing them consistently) then it becomes more clear it's not someone toggling back and forth but rather multiboxing with a script.

Lord_Frodo

keven2002 said:

Lord_Frodo said:

LMAO  There is no way they will cast the same spell all at the SAME time your toggling will cause a delay from one client to the other I do not care how fast you think you are.

I'm not talking about the same spell with the exact (down to the millisecond) timing. I haven't really seen people multiboxing with multiple mages casting something like ebolt because that doesn't make sense; it's much more damage per second & gives survivability to use warriors...it's basically unlimited mana too. I was talking more hypothetical based on Mariah's comment.

The other key thing I think you missed was that I was talking specifically to multi-clienting only 2 screens. I do this all the time with my tamer and bard when doing Lady Mel. I swap between my 2 clients and pressing my <greater heal + last target> macro and take my cu from half HP to full HP in no time. Again my chars aren't casting heal at the exact same millisecond but it's damn close because it only takes me a millisecond to toggle between screens. It takes me like .02 seconds to click between screens to initiate my macro before I toggle back and press the same macro. Come to ATL if you don't believe me.

It's the same for my bard + sampire; I can swap between screens in milliseconds to press my macros (Sampire - AI & Bard - Spell + last target) to the point where by the time I'm getting my spell off my Sampire is usually landing AI and I'm hitting the AI macro again. What I'm doing isn't that far out of the realm of possibility... but again I'm talking 2 clients. That said, if you watch me for a few minutes you will see my human error where the bard will heal my sampire when he's at full HP sometimes and sometimes I untoggle my AI (usually because I've missed a swing).

At the end of the day I'm not arguing multiboxing & multiclienting will be the EXACT same speed but I know from my own game play that it's very similar (toggling 2 clients) to multiboxing if you are just staying stationary only pressing 1 macro. When you start adding movement and dependency type actions (and are seamlessly executing them consistently) then it becomes more clear it's not someone toggling back and forth but rather multiboxing with a script.

OMG  Then you have absolutely no clue what multiboxing is and keep giving garbage as an exam[le almost popp like.  If you are multiclienting then you have nothing to fear

Mariah

I think this has gone on long enough. You can't 'multibox' unless you have installed the app to allow it.  If you're multi-clienting, don't leave any character all alone doing something that could lead to you being deemed to be AFK.