It is really difficult to retain new players. I hope this helps.

I think dropbear is right. The time it takes to move 6 toons from dungeon to dungeon would eat up any xp bonus for group size.

Unless the bonus is very very big.

Too little, too late... This should have been done at least 2 years ago.

It won't change the fact that anybody that spent seome time playing DDO can steamroll EH with a First Life Character and can do most of the quests on EE without breaking a sweat.

I still think that BB, DA and Dungeon Scaling should have been killed.
BB to be replaced by an XP neutral mechanism that encourage people to challenge quest difficulties.
Dungeon Alert replaced by a mechanism that puts lockouts in place dynamically if too much mob is aware of something ( so that people zerging invisible and sneaking rogues that are not seen or heard can reach the end without a fuss while idiots stomping in corridors will have to stop and clear all the avake mob from time to time ).
Dungeon Scaling whould be killed outright. Only one size fit them all : Full 4 or more people party. If they can't cope with it soloing, then they just pick up an easier quest.

Yobai wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 1:56am:


I used to try to 6 box alt accounts to get coin lords favor for the extra bank tabs.
Even in Korthos and Harbor, it is still annoying to move the toons.

Even with Boxer software, you need to make sure the toons are identical for movement rate and even then, slight network delays still get your team out of sync.

3-4 is workable, but 6 is too many to be practical - especially as quest space out and you come across quests with unusual requirements (eg. all toons must be at staging points to progress etc).


The other aspect is the scaling too.  Depends what difficulty you run on and what toon and how good you are, but scaling can slow things down too, making that extra XP take a lot longer.

Each to their own, but it certainly won't be easy XP.
At this stage, their only talking about that as an event - which will be a trial to see if it increases LFM's.  If it does, it will get implemented.

Flav wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 4:20am:


I disagree with this for a lot of reasons, which I've stated almost half as many times as you've proposed this, but I have a new one now.

Dungeon Scaling can't be removed now because it's exerting pressure in favor of inviting real players over dual boxing for the XP bonus.

I doubt it's much pressure for you or for most of the big guns here, but you're a minority in the game. Most players can't carry 5 multiboxed alts through, but if you make 6 boxing as easy as soloing but 50% more XP, then that will become the new norm.

Flav wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 4:20am:


I see this stated a lot.  As if the only reason players
aren't grouping is because it's easier to solo.  This
ignores:

There are fewer players

There are fewer players at BB appropriate level ranges

Some people don't want to group no matter what you
do.

It's just as likely (in fact, empirically much more likely) that
penalizing soloing would just result in fewer players full
stop.  Incentivising grouping is the right way to make a
change here - IMO of course.

For those with access to the main forums, I think Ellis'
suggestion to do away with BB and roll it into first time
completion is a far simpler and more elegant solution.
Who the fuck wants to go and talk to an NPC to suspend
their streak?

TheFifthSock wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 9:08am:


Yep IS Boxer a few years ago.
It works fine if you invest the time to set it up.

Triple boxing is doable without IS Boxer - depending on your setup.
The current DDO client makes Multi-boxing far easy to achieve.
The Akamai shit seems to chew up a lot of memory though, so I can only get 3 clients running on my main machine (8GB RAM) these days.

The key problem you will encounter - DOO does not have the /follow command like LOTRO.  So even with toons with exactly matching speed, you will get out of sync (just different lag between client and server and lost packets).  Stopping to resolve that takes time.  Even in public places it can be annoying to have 1 or 2 members fall off walkways, get stuck in bushes etc.

As you get to higher levels, differences in gear, enhancements, class, buffs and feats will mean different movement speeds that are hard to align.

The second is coordination.  You can actually setup a 6 man party to move, attack and work together.  Using an overlay and a hotbar, you can put common abilities in the same spot on each account.  For eg. you can put primary melee attack on slot 1 of hotbar, ranged on slot 2, self-heal on slot 3, key class ability on slot 4 etc.
You can transmit select target to each client and then have them all melee attack etc.
Ofc you can mix it up and have spellcasters cast spells instead of melee and have the healer use healing aura or group heals.
You only get 1 hotbar overlay of 8 (from memory) slots though.

I works ok for low level stuff like grinding Coin Lords favour on mule accounts.

So you can see that theoretically it can work, but it lacks nuance and tactics.
I found it hard to make work on Hard and Elite as the mobs that spawn are tougher and more numerous. It's easy to target one enemy at a time and focus damage, but this strategy doesn't always work in harder content where you're being attacked from multiple angles and different elevations.

Also, you can't realistically send your melee into melee, have your ranged hang back and have your spellcasters nuke other enemy casters.  Too sophisticated to achieve.

At some point, I reached the realisation that is was not efficient to do this, nor was it convenient to have all the skills I needed in my party.
So you get to a point of parking 5 at entrance, but then you hit quests with artificial quest milestones requiring you to move the party.
Moving the party around really is a PITA.

I eventually landed on it being more effective to just run with a main, maybe have a secondary (Bard for me) and use hirelings as required for trapping etc.  If I'm farming for something, I will run up to 3 clients just to get the extra chest pulls.

So your mileage may vary, so long as your expectations are realistic.  It felt fun to do for awhile, but you aren't going to be steamrolling Elite content.

Mr Reilly wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 9:53am:


hear hear, 1x internets for you sir!

P.S - all the whiny cunts in here are in fine company - the motherforums golden boys are also up in arms. You can suck each others dicks over this now 

Jeff_Stryker wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 9:51am:


/signed

And also, it's not just soloing, I run quests with my wife and we find plenty of challenge. If we got the big "You're not enjoying the game right, we're going to make it harder so you have to invite PUGs to be able to complete" from Turbine it would be the final straw.

Implying dungeon scaling only benefits antisocial soloers is deceptive.

And furthermore, what's the point of incentivising grouping? It's a niche, just like PvP. Some people like it, and it's great to support it, but it's stupid to cater to it to the point that it hurts other ways of enjoying the game.

Meursault wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 1:13pm:



Rather than drop down one difficulty level you'd quit altogether?

TheFifthSock wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 11:11am:



aaaand that's what some idiots don't get. 

if I get +10% more for each player in the group and don't lose flawless on my main for killing my multis I'm getting +30% xp.  all of a sudden semi hassle becomes worth it.

math.  the Shadeslayer.

Meursault wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 2:42pm:


right there with you.  though I doubt they would make it that hard that normal is tough for anyone.  they seem to keep making the game easier not harder.

no scaling might end up with:

casual - braindead blind players can solo
normal- easy
hard - challenging
elite - like it used to be before scaling but with the added challenge of champs

DropBear wrote on Jul 10^th, 2015 at 1:32am:


Agreed.. I have dual boxed a lot as often I play my wife's account to keep her toon within range of mine when she does play. Find it a chore running her around. I have also started up a f2p account so often have 3 accounts active running around till the p2p accounts get to far ahead then it sits idle waiting for the next tr life.

Now if they ever implemented a follow command.. it would make things so much nicer. I will often run her up naked and let mobs kill her just to carry her stone to the end of the quest for the loot if its a decent quest or something like litany flagging where you need sigils etc.  Is there someone who might know why there is no follow command in this game? I know others like NWN had it so its not a huge undertaking.

Still do it on raids from time to time long as no one minds. Most don't care about the exp loss as some douche is bound to die anyways.

have gotten quite adept at switching between both screens to keep everyone running but occasionally a lava pit will get me or get caught on a corner. One day I will get another monitor so I can see both at same time.