The Multi-box Thread: How it ruins the game.

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b15h09 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Multiboxing gives movers an unreasonable advantage over other participants in a relocation-based event. Therefore, it's cheating. You don't have to agree with me, it's just a fact.

Meh, you could say the same thing about using +mv speed gear. Gives you an unreasonable advantage over people who choose not to use it.

Every participant has access to these methods. Just because some choose to drive a car while others choose a bike, doesn't mean that the car drivers have some sort of unfair advantage. They just choose a more efficient method of transportation. One that the bike riders have access to, no less.

These advantages aren't intended to be exploited in such a way. Whereas movement speed is a function of the game that you choose to pursue or not and is within the game itself, multiboxing is not a function of the game itself. Just like how "tax loopholes" exist and can be taken advantage of (and others can take advantage of them as well), they're not supposed to be taken advantage of but are rather exploitative of the system.

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Yoojinlee wrote:

Except the problem is that the economy is breaking apart in the "intrinsic value" department. Even though there is an intrinsic value to chaos, GCP, and other orbs such as fusing, the values of them are spiraling out of control because of the flood in the marketplace.

Just like there is some "intrinsic value" to gold, the intrinsic value starts to fall apart once the market gets flooded with gold and, thus, people start trying to find new avenues to dump their falling gold and invest into a new item. Part of something's intrinsic value is a function of its scarcity, and if there is some way to make something multitudes more common than another currency (due to the possibility of multiboxing in this case), then its value will plummet in regards to the rarer currency.

Of course, an argument could be made that there is nothing that could not be done by another person, but that's a case of "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality to "gaming" the game. Yes, it's a game, but gaming the system in such a way was not how it was intended to pan out. "Blame the game, not the player" only seeks to reinforce the action as acceptable. Yes, there is a certain amount of blame that the game has for not being able to address it, but there is also an amount of blame for the people who abuse the system as well.

Part of gold's intrinsic value is its scarcity. Not really comparable to to PoE currency. Every wearable item in the game can be crafted through the games currency, therefore each item has a calculable average currency cost. We don't have the specifics yet, but in time, we'll have a pretty good idea. Even exalteds have a tether to the economy, though that largely is due to scarcity in comparison to a mirror. An exalted will never be worth more than a mirror due to a mirrors extreme scarcity, and a mirror will never be worth more than the most perfectly rolled item equippable in the game. This is the natural state of the economy as designed. No amount of multiboxing, drop rate increases, or even duping, were a method found, could change this. What someone is willing to pay is subjective, but the average crafting cost is far less so.

What we're seeing is the economy finding it's naturally inflated state. It's reached this state quicker than it would have without multiboxing, but the end result is inevitable due to the currency/crafting system's design. We couldn't see this in CB, because there were never enough players for the economy to reach it's natural state.

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b15h09 wrote:

Part of gold's intrinsic value is its scarcity. Not really comparable to to PoE currency. Every wearable item in the game can be crafted through the games currency, therefore each item has a calculable average currency cost. We don't have the specifics yet, but in time, we'll have a pretty good idea. Even exalteds have a tether to the economy, though that largely is due to scarcity in comparison to a mirror. An exalted will never be worth more than a mirror due to a mirrors extreme scarcity, and a mirror will never be worth more than the most perfectly rolled item equippable in the game. This is the natural state of the economy as designed. No amount of multiboxing, drop rate increases, or even duping, were a method found, could change this. What someone is willing to pay is subjective, but the average crafting cost is far less so.

What we're seeing is the economy finding it's naturally inflated state. It's reached this state quicker than it would have without multiboxing, but the end result is inevitable due to the currency/crafting system's design. We couldn't see this in CB, because there were never enough players for the economy to reach it's natural state.

Which should be fine and all if this was truly happening. But the problem, as I see it, is that the economy is falling apart as people are abandoning lower currencies and attempting to tether almost all of their trades to exalted. The currencies used most often in crafting: alcs, fusings, chaos, alts, and otherwise which have a more tangible use and are used more often are finding themselves plummeting in value even though these are the currencies that are taken out of the market and put into the market most often. This flux shouldn't cause it so that the economy starts tumbling out of control. However, what ends up happening is that there are enough of these people who hoard the higher currencies that they are the dominant force of deciding how to tether their values. Since trade chats are instanced and no one has the full information of whether or not these trades happen, a snowball effect can occur as a small amount of people can cause lost market confidence in these lower currencies. If a person spends all day pushing the idea that they can get 25 alts for 1 chaos and 5 chaos for a GCP and funnel it all the way up to the ever-expensive exalted (which has maintained its value somewhat suspiciously) then people who see these trade offers start to go along with it as this causes a new standard.

This is an unnatural state of affairs that should not be happening. Unlike fiat money, these currencies have tangible values that should allow them to be tethered to items (like you pointed out), however, we are having the same sort of problem as people trying to withdraw all of their money from their banks. If everyone didn't panic and the money stayed in the bank, there wouldn't be much of an issue. But, due to the scramble to get it all out, they're causing a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic collapse.

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Yoojinlee wrote:

Which should be fine and all if this was truly happening. But the problem, as I see it, is that the economy is falling apart as people are abandoning lower currencies and attempting to tether almost all of their trades to exalted. The currencies used most often in crafting: alcs, fusings, chaos, alts, and otherwise which have a more tangible use and are used more often are finding themselves plummeting in value even though these are the currencies that are taken out of the market and put into the market most often. This flux shouldn't cause it so that the economy starts tumbling out of control. However, what ends up happening is that there are enough of these people who hoard the higher currencies that they are the dominant force of deciding how to tether their values. Since trade chats are instanced and no one has the full information of whether or not these trades happen, a snowball effect can occur as a small amount of people can cause lost market confidence in these lower currencies. If a person spends all day pushing the idea that they can get 25 alts for 1 chaos and 5 chaos for a GCP and funnel it all the way up to the ever-expensive exalted (which has maintained its value somewhat suspiciously) then people who see these trade offers start to go along with it as this causes a new standard.

This is an unnatural state of affairs that should not be happening. Unlike fiat money, these currencies have tangible values that should allow them to be tethered to items (like you pointed out), however, we are having the same sort of problem as people trying to withdraw all of their money from their banks. If everyone didn't panic and the money stayed in the bank, there wouldn't be much of an issue. But, due to the scramble to get it all out, they're causing a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic collapse.

Exalted values are very subjective, because they're luxury items. You don't need an exalted, but they can make a great piece of gear even better. They still fall in a defined range, albeit a very large range. As to the price 'plummeting' on other orbs, what we're seeing is these orbs finding their actual intrinsic value. It takes hundreds, even thousands, to roll certain items. They're not worth much, really. The real problem lies in the drop rates. They drop so infrequently in a normal play session, people perceive them as valuable, but their actual crafting usefulness individually is negligible. Because of this, people hoard, rather than craft. As a result, it reinforces the end consequence of the design. Enough currency in the economy that an item is ultimately worth its average crafting cost.

We'll only see price relief when high end items have saturated the market enough that they must be sold below crafting cost.

The lower prices drop on crafting orbs, the easier it is to craft.

Sounds good

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b15h09 wrote:

Exalted values are very subjective, because they're luxury items. You don't need an exalted, but they can make a great piece of gear even better. They still fall in a defined range, albeit a very large range. As to the price 'plummeting' on other orbs, what we're seeing is these orbs finding their actual intrinsic value. It takes hundreds, even thousands, to roll certain items. They're not worth much, really. The real problem lies in the drop rates. They drop so infrequently in a normal play session, people perceive them as valuable, but their actual crafting usefulness individually is negligible. Because of this, people hoard, rather than craft. As a result, it reinforces the end consequence of the design. Enough currency in the economy that an item is ultimately worth its average crafting cost.

We'll only see price relief when high end items have saturated the market enough that they must be sold below crafting cost.

But are they really finding their "actual intrinsic value"? The problem with trying to tether the items to the cost of making them starts to break apart when some people can roll godly items in 2 rolls and some people take hundreds. And even then, it's not as if we can truly gauge how many items it would take to get such a roll to actually gauge these "intrinsic values" that you speak of. There are some very middling items that I've tried to purchase that people demanded much more than I would expect to be worth and some good items that are sold undercosted compared to those items.

Yes, their "intrinsic value" can be negligible but at the same time, their usefulness should allow them to retain some value. The fact that they're useful and they're constantly taken out of the market should mean that they shouldn't become worthless. Yet this is what is occurring. Multiboxers seem to be perverting the market by oversaturating the market with chaos even though chaos has become more scarce from the nerf to the recipe. To this, I have a theory. It is not that it's become scarce to everyone that chaos is dropping (this would sort of fly in the face of supply/demand, but such events are possible) but that multiboxers who retain the ability to farm chaos in massive amounts, can flood the market with chaos and thus dictate the worth (or worthlessness) of chaos overall and the lower currencies. Perhaps if chaos and the higher currencies were more accessible to other people, then the prices of these higher currencies wouldn't be dictated by the will of those who multibox (although, to be honest, it would also hurt those who acquired exalteds and divines on their own without the help of multiboxing).

The fact that exalted is one of the less useful currencies (and is mostly used to make great items better [at a chance]) and yet dictates the market seems to indicate that there is something wrong. In a primitive currency system, the most useful items should be the standard of exchange. Just like how salt and wheat were currencies because they were valuable for their uses, alcs, chaos, and fusings shouldn't be dropping as drastically as they should as they're the most common, and most useful, currency items.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

The lower prices drop on crafting orbs, the easier it is to craft.

Sounds good

It only really gets easier to craft for those who are already in the higher currencies. Those who have their worth mostly in the lower currencies are the ones who are hurt the most by these turns of events (and tend to be the ones who need gear the most) because of the difficulty of "trading up".

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Yoojinlee wrote:

But are they really finding their "actual intrinsic value"? The problem with trying to tether the items to the cost of making them starts to break apart when some people can roll godly items in 2 rolls and some people take hundreds. And even then, it's not as if we can truly gauge how many items it would take to get such a roll to actually gauge these "intrinsic values" that you speak of. There are some very middling items that I've tried to purchase that people demanded much more than I would expect to be worth and some good items that are sold undercosted compared to those items.

That's why it's an average crafting cost we look for, not individual. It will take a good deal of research by the community, but eventually we'll see it. It may not be perfectly accurate, but will give us a firm baseline. As random as RNG is, after 500 samples, you have a reliable average. You can get an vague idea far below that though. Yes, people overvalue and undervalue to an individuals perception. And a persons willingness to pay is largely dependent on the perceive wealth they have, and the ease at which they acquired it. This is why multiboxing seems to be a problem, as their ease of acquiring wealth is greater. But the design of the system itself leads to the conclusion that multiboxing speeds us towards. Again, this is why I say the problem is in the drop rates.

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Yes, their "intrinsic value" can be negligible but at the same time, their usefulness should allow them to retain some value. The fact that they're useful and they're constantly taken out of the market should mean that they shouldn't become worthless. Yet this is what is occurring. Multiboxers seem to be perverting the market by oversaturating the market with chaos even though chaos has become more scarce from the nerf to the recipe. To this, I have a theory. It is not that it's become scarce to everyone that chaos is dropping (this would sort of fly in the face of supply/demand, but such events are possible) but that multiboxers who retain the ability to farm chaos in massive amounts, can flood the market with chaos and thus dictate the worth (or worthlessness) of chaos overall and the lower currencies. Perhaps if chaos and the higher currencies were more accessible to other people, then the prices of these higher currencies wouldn't be dictated by the will of those who multibox (although, to be honest, it would also hurt those who acquired exalteds and divines on their own without the help of multiboxing).

And they do retain value, but only the value that they add. If a certain prefix only rolls 2% of the time on a wand, then a wand with only that prefix is worth 50 or so alterations. That doesn't mean someone will pay it, but that's it's base value. The higher end the item, the closer to the base cost a seller will be able to charge to find a buyer. Very simplified, but yes, the most perfectly rolled rare could be worth many thousands of orbs due to sheer rarity. And someone might find a way to pay for it. There's plenty of subjectivity in the value of things up to high end, but there, you'll find the real currency, and it won't be cheap.

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The fact that exalted is one of the less useful currencies (and is mostly used to make great items better [at a chance]) and yet dictates the market seems to indicate that there is something wrong. In a primitive currency system, the most useful items should be the standard of exchange. Just like how salt and wheat were currencies because they were valuable for their uses, alcs, chaos, and fusings shouldn't be dropping as drastically as they should as they're the most common, and most useful, currency items.

As I said, it's a luxury item. Everyone wants one, because the supply is drying up. You can easily go 1000 hours without finding one. This is why trade is trying to go exclusively exalted.

Really, trade was popping when the chaos recipe was in effect. It wasn't until GGG trainwrecked it that trade went all to hell. The nerf made the market panic, and everyone wants to get out with exalteds. All other currency is being neglected. A lack of liquidity will fuck a market hardcore. Again, I say increase drop rates.

It's possible there may be some currencies that are actually undervalued currently due to the panic, but eventually, they'll find their correction. I still think most low level currencies are probably overvalued, though.

Who mutliboxes at solitaire? No one.

Why? Because there is no advantage to it.


There's no more need to write half page descriptions.

After 45 pages, it's clear the cheaters will continue to cheat and the legit players will leave the game.

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Yoojinlee wrote:

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SL4Y3R wrote:

The lower prices drop on crafting orbs, the easier it is to craft.

Sounds good

It only really gets easier to craft for those who are already in the higher currencies. Those who have their worth mostly in the lower currencies are the ones who are hurt the most by these turns of events (and tend to be the ones who need gear the most) because of the difficulty of "trading up".

The moment I can trade a gcp for 20+ fusings, ill be a really really happy guy. People who love exalts for whatever reason are the odd balls.