Greetings Friends! Welcome to our semi regularly scheduled update on Shroud of the Avatar. We have a few bits of news that I want to do in a more discussion style, so let’s jump right into it.

• Multiboxing Clarification Announcement and Discussion
• Catnip Game’s Vision for 2020 for Shroud of the Avatar.

Multiboxing Clarification Announcement

It appears that after a thread appeared on the Shroud of the Avatar forums, Chris Spears has decided to clarify the “official stance” on “multiboxing”. Before we jump into the clarification, let’s talk about Multiboxing first and I want to cover the initial thoughts I had when I first saw the thread and posts.  Multiboxing refers to playing more than one character at the same time in an MMORPG. This is usually achieved one of two ways, using multiple separate PCs to run the game or you run multiple instances of the game on the same PC.

Controlling the multiple characters has been done in various ways, for some each client is controlled at the same time concurrently via one input mouse & keyboard (could be done via hardware or a software method).  For example, using one mouse and keyboard to control multiple computers, virtual multiple computers, or multiple clients on one computer at the same time.  In some cases players swap client windows quickly and control each character as fast as they can, aka “Tabbing between windows” as it is called. Some ppl call this version of multiboxing “multi-clienting”. This is because you aren’t automating the multiboxing, which is typically frowned upon and even a bannable offense with some MMOs.

Many MMOs have allowed multiboxing over the years. Age of Conan, EVE Online, EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Lineage, Perfect World, The Realm Online, Old School Runescape, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, and more.  Now some games do put limitations on multiboxing, such as only allowing multiboxing if it is used in “non-competitive” content.   Some studios put limitations in regards to how you control the multiple characters when multiboxing, or even sometimes limiting the number of characters/clients you can multibox.

The stance of Portalarium is:

I’ve seen a lot of misinformation on this shared around which is causing some unrest so I wanted to make a clean post here stating our position.

Multi-boxing IS allowed. The only thing that is not allowed is having a second (or third+) client in the background that is executing some automatically triggered skill like autoattack or crafting. For example, if you run multiple clients and switch to a second one to cast a heal spell, that is fine BUT your other account might miss an auto attack or two while you do that. If you are a streamer running a single client and want to tab over to twitch to chat, that is fine and nothing changes as this will only impact people running multiple clients.

Auto attack was not originally a feature in the game. It was something we added because some of our players have conditions that make it difficult to constantly click a button. While we have no plans to remove it, this along with pets is quite possibly the most exploited feature in the game as it is almost the only one where you set it and forget it and keeps on triggering. This is very different than a DoT or HoT as those are just slightly more efficient spells that balance that efficiency by not applying all the effect up front. Also, I will be investigating making pets follow the same rules so that pets stop attacking when you run multiple clients and the pet client is in the background.

Starting next release I will be enforcing on client and observing on server this behavior. If multiple clients are running on the same machine and skills and spells and autoattacks will only activate if the client is in the foreground. I will only do this check if multiple clients are running so it should not impact the play experience of streamers or crafters who start doing something them tab over to another window to chat or check a wiki page UNLESS you are running multiple clients.

Yes, I’m aware that there may be a number of ways on the client to try and trick this system which is why I’ll also add a graph for tracking this type behavior on our server and investigate those that seem out of order or those that are reported. Those who work to circumvent this will likely receive a single warning.

tl;dr version

• Multiboxing is fine

• Auto-attacking in the background IF you are multiboxing is not fine. Not allowed and will be blocked by client.

• Players who run a single client will not be impacted by this in anyway

The moment I read “The only thing that is not allowed is having a second (or third+) client in the background that is executing some automatically triggered skill like autoattack or crafting.”  Now from this line I assume is Chris referencing software that can auto trigger skills for you, aka helping you multi bot using one input by allowing it to trigger actions in multiple clients at once? my concern is does he really want to remove what some would call a basic part of gameplay? I would think based on his comment in a multiboxing and crafting thread, he is worried about macro/script programs. However, again his own comments conflict with the official clarification stance cause of his not caring as much about crafting. Once again though, the unclear communication from the SotA Dev team will create another series of questions from the community.

In the case of his referencing crafting when the game client is not a focus,  “afk crafting” is often done by those who find mass crafting boring and tedious, they would use an secondary account and character to do that while playing their main one. Typically tabbing between the two clients. This has been going on since even before Ultima Online in graphical MMOs. With a crafting system like Shroud of the Avatar, mass crafting of items can take hours. So if tabbing away affects crafting, this will kill off what I expect is a portion of the SotA economy.

In many MMOs, autoattack is a basic function of combat. It helps open up the player base as it keeps it a non-reflex based combat system, but at the same time they don’t want to slow down the pace with a turn based combat system.  It also that helps fill in time between skills/cooldowns and provides a good low base level damage output. If you are tabbing between clients, it is inevitable you will have one or two auto attacks. But at the same time, because of cooldowns and resource management in any MMO, you would expect some auto attacks or active attacks to fill in the gap.  I would even say I would expect active attack combat systems to have higher damage from active attacks, than you would get from an auto attack.

Chris mentioned a “rule has always been that you can’t auto attack unattended” is one that I spent some time trying to find, to no avail, except when Chris brought it up. Certainly auto attack builds have been discussed even in the forums and other places, with players talking about multitasking SotA combat with other tasks on their computer.  However, I would expect the % of players using mostly autoattack on any character is rather small due to the higher damage output of skills. Plus, Bots and Macros have been banned for a long time already. This policy now, of no client in the background even being allowed 1 auto attack between skill usage because you are tabbing between clients, is designed simply to discourage multiclient multiboxing.  Leave it to gamers to always find a way to try and find optimal methods to do content in a video game, only to have it punished by developers, even if it was completely within the guidelines set for years.

You will note that in the original post in the thread that seemed to start this whole thing, the player was tabbing between windows. There was no software/macro/script help, and obviously the skills do the most amount of damage in the combat.  You can actually follow his movements in the video if you watch carefully or even slow the video down. This is the multiboxing method where there will always be diminishing returns the more clients you go with, but it is the most popular method because with practice, you can be really good at it. This falls in complete line with what most MMOs in the past have allowed as legitimate multiboxing that “isn’t cheating via macros/additional software/etc” in the eyes of many.  However, as always I believe . If you are tabbing between clients and having only 1 input into 1 client at a time, there will be auto attacks to fill in that dead space. In fact, removing auto attack will probably make an already underwhelming combat system worse.

Larger MMOs where combat balance issues caused a boom in multiboxing came up with wonderful methods that actually discouraged the practice, such as how Blizzard handled multiboxing farmers. Skills used by mobs in dungeons and other content often helped wipe out these parties of characters that were all controlled by one player.  On the auto attack side of things, when I and others proposed an ESO style active combat with activatable skills, back before the combat system was ever made. The SotA devs said that style combat was impossible to do because of lag. Despite the fact ESO and other games had already been doing it for years. Obviously the devs changed their tune on that and free attack became a thing eventually.

So what I would challenge Chris and the dev team to do, would be to not punish multiboxing. If a player is multiboxing like this player was, or how many player multitask, to let them enjoy SotA this way. They are continuing a gaming tradition going back to even before Ultima Online. Focus on the tracking of those who have multiple clients all doing stuff at the same time instantly which would then obviously be a bot or macro or is “broadcasting” commands to multiple clients at the same time .  Actually play these games that have done clever methods to deal with multiboxers who use methods like simultaneous control of characters, and learn from them.  Honestly, I have my doubts auto attack is really all that efficient in SotA, in regards to optimal damage per second. If it is, then there is a much bigger problem with combat than there is with multiboxing.

Any thoughts? Please leave a comment below!

2020 Vision for Shroud of the Avatar

Before Portalarium sold their operating assets to Catnip games, We had regular vision/plan/schedule updates from the SotA dev team. Not surprisingly, this hasn’t changed. Christ Spears posted a forum thread on January 6th for anyone to read. I will highlight the most notable items below.

• Episode 2 will be a rollout of new content on a continuous basis, based on releases/monthly. Such as a new scene. The overall Episode 2 map, items, creatures, and skills would then be parsed out over time with hopefully more content ramping up for episode 2 in the later part of 2020.
• NPC city focus for Episode 2 will be drastically different, more focused on NPCs and but using more of the space for the story and using storyline scenes multiple times. (This is something that many of us have complained about since the final wipe of character data that was done. About time this is embraced). This also means less player houses in these scenes/areas.
• Chris claims there are roughly 500-700 new players who try the game each week and only 12% of those stay.   If this was the case, I would expect the population to be larger than what I hear from people who do still play the game. I highly doubt this is accurate, and with past dishonest statements from various dev team members (current and past) I don’t believe it without proof of the metrics. The statement that most people quit typically during the first scene as well, is of no surprise to me as well.
• Quarter 1 of 2020 – more player owned towns in episode 2 Overworld map, if this means they are selling POTs again, obviously this is to help fund development. I still wish we could see what was supposed to be the SEC filed annual report for Portalarium for 2019. Combat balance patch cause of high end players. Toggle to expand party size for raid size parties. Tiered Subscriptions are mentioned with no details of what that would entail.
• Quarter 2 of 2020 – Expand Looking for Group system, more weather system updates, more vanity items, more skills and combos, a new quest system as well starts.
• Quarters 3 and 4 of 2020 – Mounts, Faction System, Achievements, Improvements to the Mail/Quest/Guild/Randsom systems, plus Players Crafting Outdoor Scenes because Catnip will continue the trend Portalarium did of crowd-sourcing content creation. They have already crowd-sourced Music, NPC creation, etc. If you wanted a game with as many NPCs as they said they wanted early on, as well as have it be a story based game, you need a dedicated writing team. They may have talked about wanting to find great talent to do certain things, what happened post Kickstarter, certainly shows what their priorities really were.

Any thoughts on this as well? Please leave your comments below.

That is it for today’s Update of the Avatar,  I will try to continue to do this monthly, but I may go longer depending on the news cycle.