GGG stance on "Mules" (Multi-Boxing to store gear, improve exp and loot drops)

Hey

Ive seen a few lvl 1's in merciless and other difficulty's just hanging around. I have heard these characters referred to as mules.

To my understanding they are used to increase exp and loot gained for mains. If this is true this kind of use can be quite damaging to ladders and economy.

These people will not only level faster but they will be able to farm more then any others.

Is this use true or am i worrying about nothing.

If it is true, will this be fixed so this cannot happen as this will make it a necessary to be able to compete win ladders etc.


Please let me know.


(i may have posted this in the wrong section.. if so can i mod move it please)

Mules are usually used for extra space for stashing away items. Once you one out of shared stash space, people may create extra character and extra accounts for with the sole purpose of storing their items in their inventory.

With their Cash Shop system allowing very large stash space in PoE, the only benefit to mules in PoE will be free players who want extra space without spending any cash.

Mules are the least of anybody's problems.

Extra space is no problem but OP actually sees a problem elsewhere, I believe.

Yes, some clarity must be made here. 'Mules' in ARPGs definitely refer to low level characters used to hold excess items -- it was mostly for when the stash was not as expandable as it is here.

What Reaper's talking about is more along the lines of artificially increasing the difficulty thereby increasing the drops. I'm no expert on the matter, but I believe this falls under the discussion of 'multiboxing', certainly nothing new.

I cannot find a GGG response to it, however. Touchy subject, as glancing through those threads will reveal.

But in a free to play ARPG where making accounts is effortless, I think we can expect to see this sort of thing in the future.

...the great defence is that what it's really doing is simulating the /players x feature from Diablo 2. I think GGG should consider going that route, if indeed this does seem to be a problem.

op is correct actually.

I was playing with someone earlier today who claimed they were running chaos with 2 lvl 2 characters sitting afk (one of which was a mule). He was particularly proud of the extra xp he was getting from doing so.

I dont see it as such a huge problem. As long as it doesnt take place in any race events.

If someone wants to fight off harder monsters all by themselves for more loot and xp then more power to them. I personally wouldnt go through the trouble.

But if you think about it, they could of ran with a group of capable players, clearing more content in a shorter amount of time equaling more potential loot. So its not like you're at a disadvantage (loot wise, and in some situations xp wise) if you're just running the legit way.

Heya PH, it was a good session, unfortunately my client crashed :(
Yeah I was with the same session as PH, yes, I discussed the topic with him (not PH, but with the person who brought the subject up).

The proper term is 'multi'. A common problem, er scenario in various rpgs. There were threads here saying some rpgs approve of this while others don't. Unfortunately I can't find the threads now.

In the same instance, multis would act as mules. You can't log in as two characters at once from the same account on the same PC, or log into the same account from multiple computers. But how can you be stopped if its from say, a different account, using a different computer, on the same network? Like I said something to that effect in chat. Especially since this is a FTP game, and many households nowadays have many computers.

Yes the spectre of farming is the elephant in the room here

I can't remember GGG's stance.
The general consensus was it will be hard for GGG to catch 'em.

Looks like this topic was first discussed before I joined, so I don't know how controversial this topic was prior.


MULTI BOX / DUAL LOG , deal with this. Is it helping to test? no
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/16681/highlight/


What is GGG's official stance on multi-clienting/dual boxing?
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/25505/highlight/

Ahh multi-boxing. I knew I was missing something, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Yeah, It's been around since D2, and I expect it'll stay around in PoE.

From what I remember /players command for D2 only worked in single player.

I do feel like there should be a simple level requirements on difficulties. It won't stop multi-boxing, but it will make it a little less ridiculous.

Making the game harder for better drops is something I hope the end game map system will fix. As long as it's scaled properly; where you are better off soloing a rare map then taking a few clients into an easy one for extra drops.

Of course, end game maps have limited amount of trips to town so Quality > Quanity.

There will still be people multi-boxing boss runs. Of that, I have no doubt.

Thanks for the reply's guys. i agree there should be some kind of requirement for a character before he can just move on and up. level 1 being to low to make this kind of thing right.

I recently brought this issue up on the alpha forum. I won't comment on the dev's response, but I believe they understand that it is both legitimate in some cases and exploitative in others.

There's nothing wrong with muling items. Hopefully, this will be made even easier with an in-game mailing system and public stash tabs. Both have been mentioned by devs in the past.

Using dummy characters to manually increase party size is an entirely different issue, one that I'm strongly against, personally. There are 2 reasons for doing this: 1) increasing challenge and 2) exploiting the party mechanics for personal gain. I believe the second happens far, far more often than the first. One of the intentions with the map end-game system is to fix this by allowing players to scale the challenge of areas while offering appropriately-scaled rewards for doing so. People who honestly want more challenge will be able to get it.

Trying to lock characters to certain areas by level is unfair and unnecessarily restrictive.

If you've got low levels increasing the difficulty of an area the area is still more difficult so what's the problem? Having equal level players increase the difficulty and is easier because you've got someone helping you. In D2 it was common for people to join public trading/dueling games with 7 plays and then go solo Mephisto and other bosses.


In D2 you could rush level ones through the entire game and it was common. Why try and limit this because someone can do the same thing, except it doesn't even benefit them as much?


If you've got extra players increasing the difficulty it's stilled harder and without the help of someone to clear it. I don't see why you're trying to skew this into a perspective like it's an exploit when it's in fact an accomplishment since they're doing what should require additional people.