well, i play (pay ) for 3 accounts, and if they (SOE ) going to the ""discouraging boxing route "" , i will right away cancel both of my alts accounts , and i am sure many would do the same $$ . i am max xp fast with my " main " toon , and when i didn't had any box , i was taking here and there some "break" from the game , and since i play my alts (2 , since about 5 years or so now ) , i didn't go away from the game since then. i play since sept 1999 btw...
I find it laughable that people are actually suggesting SOE take steps to reduce subscriptions and thereby intentionally reduce the revenue stream. Yeah, that'll happen. I'm certain that making as little money as possible is the company's overall objective.
The problem is that this doesnt have to be an "OR" question. It can easily be an AND question. There were what 18 missions in VOA? There were maybe half of them that you could box (1 of which was soloable) and maybe half that weren't There were 14 missions in VOA. Of which none of them are box friendly. It's really more than "Box" Friendly though. It's a question of Tank Mercs though. People with a tank, do missions with cleric/dps mercs. People without a Tank can't do as far as I can tell any missions. By all means though, if all content is meant to appeal to what one segment of population finds fun and not be inclusive to all segments of population, eq shrinks. The ripple of shrinking population echoes to everyone's fun in many ways. $ wise as accounts dry up so to will developer resources. Guild wise when guild lose mates/raiders it impacts the games fun. Directly its not fun when your guild lose those critical amount to do things. Indirectly its not fun when poaching happens. (guild higher up food chain loses someone and poaches who opens a spot who poaches who poaches) Content should be designed for everyone. I mean that in so many ways. Difficulty Level spreads (Some hard hard named are great) Raid Level Spreads. Things for people who like Questing. Things for people who like Fantasy Killing Sprees (Who doesnt like new titles)
I only skimmed over most of the posts in this thread, but the OP's premise is that he can't box missions in RoF because they are emote driven and based on raid mechanics? I have three boxed SL1, CC1, Kael1 & 2, EW1, ET 1, Xorbb 1, Grelleth 1, and BG 1. I also 2 boxed ( with another person 2 boxing ) CC2. The only first mission I see no way of boxing is CH 1. If you can box that, you are a better man than I ( though to be honest, I'm not a very good boxer, so this isn't saying much ). On the other hand, most of the second missions are pretty hard and generally merc and box unfriendly. None of the missions I listed utilize any emotes of significance that I can recall and are all pretty straight forward kill this, loot that, kill boss type mission.
RvR is at least in line with where it should be with RoF. The missions that require a real group of 6 on up to the raids give better rewards than the lesser missions that can be boxed, moloed or soloed which is only fair really. Missions being unfriendly to boxing and mercs in VoA had the stigma of being a bit light on the RvR, especially with exp, so people did not care to repeat them past the flags or whatever specific drop they wanted finally came about. This go around that should not be the case so hopefully there will be more people wanting to group up to repeat missions. That should take some pressure off people thinking they need to box/molo the whole group game.
I think you should also make the distinction between people who box and like it, and people who box and don't like it but do it out of necessity. It would be nice to know who boxes and who doesn't. It would also be nice to have a server where boxing isn't allowed so people who don't box have more people to play with, and people who box and want to stop boxing can do so without being left without a group. Boxers directly limit grouping opportunities because of the server caps, which makes other people box, many who don't want to box, and eventually you have a server where no people group anymore.
9 out of 10 people will respond that boxing beats doing nothing. Maybe some genuinely enjoy it but for most, they just want to make some progress with their time online. Boxing is not the disease. Merely a symptom of a bigger ailment and that ailment is that this game is 13 years old and bringing in very little fresh blood combined with people having busy adult lives.
I box a cleric (currently becoming my main) and a monk (which i'm considering converting to a beastlord though there is a strong consideration for a shadow knight as it would result in a higher dps 2 box) I box because I don't like to go and waste peoples time helping me when I could do it on my own but I dont box for grinds. I specially like it when it's very challenging and when I have to wipe a couple of times to complete my objective. I don't feel that SoE needs to make the game box friendly for me, I enjoy having more complicated group missions even if it means I cant box (I am a scary cleric when I box). <insert personal attack> If the OP finds that the barrels in the SL missions makes boxing too hard then he reallyjust wants it too easy
Just because you could "box" a lot of a game that was meant to be "multiplayer" never guaranteed you could do so in all of it. No doubt the hissing and blowing will pay off for you though, and you can return to your solitaire again for the next year. The reason you can't get a 45 minute group is because no one wants to dump their 3 'boxes for you and your 2 'boxes.
I'm not a normal player. My visual motor reaction time is so slow (5th percentile), I would be unable to parse the code before it stunned me. No game company has to make accomodations for the disabled but if they want everyone to play, they should consider some disabilities. I started boxing because it was necessary before mercs. It still is to make campfires. Because zone times are sometimes so long, I can get quite a bit of bank organizing done in the time it takes a main to zone. *.Lee of Povar
well said. The average Everquest gamer (read: majority) is not your 22 year old with nothing going on, or your 40 year old ..well..similar. I would hedge my bets on the average Everquest player is your (now) middle age person (see Fan Faire) coming home from work , taking care of some personal business , be it kids, dinner, family, husband/wife, life issues, etc... then logging on in the late afternoon ( hence why servers are so empty until late day ) to enjoy a few hours in a fantasy world with some friends to wind down, hopefully, stress free, before they start the cycle again the next day. It is what it is. the game is in it's late stages. As one previous posted pointed out. There is very little "fresh blood" as this game does not appeal to these "visually better" games currently out on the market and very little advertising is done for the game, especially centered around the games strength, it's story line and history. 75 % of the current player base has been in Norrath for well over 4 years or more. Friendships have been established, Preferences have been set. Some people enjoy just doing their own thing while others enjoy being social in groups or guilds. I am not sure there is a easy answer to the boxing thing. Or the mechanics of the game, that would appeal to the current Everquest player.... I know, speaking strictly for myself, I have been struggling to find a reason to log in anymore. My wife plays and she recently got one of her friends to start playing... But 13 years of this madness has taken it's toll. To what end will we get for all our stress and toils ? Only to have the servers shut down and all our hard work and progress and time / money put into the game to be just "Deleted" ? I know I am rambling, but there is so much wrong with this game at the same time there is so much right.
wrong, many times i play out of group 2 of the my toons to help dps or healing ( i never slack , it 's not in me ) and killing with 8 toons is faster xp than killing with 6 but it's usually friends or guildies.......... here and there i add and random player who sent me a tell if i had a space in group.. bad thing , here and there i got kill shot my my 2 toons outside group i play about 50% boxing and the other 50 % grouping with guildies / friends..
This is an impossible request, so you might as well stop asking for it. There is no way to stop boxing with a "rule", since the rule cannot be enforced. There is no practical way in an online setting to distinguish between three people playing three toons and one person playing the same three toons. The reason boxing was rare in the "early days" was because of hardware limitations. Most people only had one gaming computer, and that computer of the day wasn't capable of playing multiple sessions of EQ, so boxing was only possible for those with multiple computers.
Again, for the umpieth time, many games do not have boxing because the input is too fast for boxers. The fact no one in those games boxes is a direct result of the required, unpredictable and continuous input speed. EQ is the exception to the rule, not the norm. EQ allows classes to use predictable macros which is exploited in a boxing scenario. There are 100 times more players playing a game like Vindictus than there are playing Everquest and not a single person boxes in that game, not one. A boxing check would work like this: While I don't have a problem with multiboxing, it does limit grouping opportunities for others when it became widespread as it is now, a server has a player cap and single-account-owners who want to group are limited in grouping opportunities because of multiboxing. I know plenty of people who would like to stop boxing because not only is it not fun for many, it is also too expensive, there is a thread on this very page about that. If multiboxing had no impact on single-account-owners or people who don't like to box, I would not have any issue with it, but the fact of the matter is that the more people box, the less grouping opportunity is possible for others as a result of the player server cap. Someone asked for a server without multiboxing, I say, why not, let those people who do not box transfer to this server and have a better experience.
So you don't have a problem with multiboxing or you do? I have a feeling if you started a boxer free server it would not be very crowded. Also, its not a fact that the more people box the less grouping is possible for others because of the server player cap I highly doubt that any of the servers atm are near any player cap if in fact there are still any hard caps in place
I do have an issue with the fact it limits grouping opportunities for other players. If a server has a 2000 player cap and 1600 characters are boxed you just limited the potentialy grouping partners from 2000 to 400. I don't have an issue with the concept of multiboxing as long as it doesn't impact other players, but the way it is done now it impacts other players.
What servers have these player caps in Everquest? Are any of the Everquest servers near these caps? I have not heard of any hard caps being put in place since I've been back?
Well, indirectly it would also impact grouping opportunities. If you have 200 players on a 4000 player capped server, and 190 of them box, it's self-limiting grouping opportunities. Grouping would be much more streamlined if single-account-owners were concentraded.
Maybe someone should ask a moderator to start a poll to see how many box 2 or more characters at once and how many do not. Even if its just to login a free cleric account to cast a rez, it is still 2 on at once.
