To the Player Council, What are you all doing lately? Updates?

[Yulin-Gladden]

..We haven't had a 'choose your discount' recently, but that would work nicely for this one. Just add one item and you're at 3000TP, which (in the past) unlocked the highest discount - 20 or 30%, I believe.

Plus, you're buying this with TP, not dollars, and the 'double bonus points' sale is pretty frequent too...

All in all, if you time it right, I think one could get this for significantly less than $30.

Honestly, this should be standard practice for anyone who is worried about their budget. Between double-bonus points, pick your own discounts, and sale items, you can save at minimum 25% on most everything, if you just plan ahead and know what you need to buy. IMO, of course.

[ConnAndraia]

As they are all under an NDA, they cannot answer you. It would violate their NDA and result in their removal from the council. Much like Palantir players cannot tell you what they are working on.

With that said, I can point to some examples of things they have been working on...

• The newly updated and more compact forum structure.
• The creation of the 20 Questions we post every few weeks.
• A new item coming in Update 11.2.
• Very lengthy discussions on Multi-Boxing (not a violation) and Rank Farming(appropriate actions).

Providing feedback on:

• Housing updates.
• Class changes.
• Skill Trees.
• Warbands.
• LOTRO Store items.

Three members of the council who live nearby and one who will be in town for other reasons have been invited to sit down with us and discuss a number of topics as well as tour the studio this week.

Those are the highlights, there have been a lot of discussions on a number of topics and many many suggestions made by the council or at least brought to our attention by them (they bring some of the top suggestions from the Player Suggestions forums to council discussions).

*Very lengthy discussions on Multi-Boxing (not a violation) and Rank Farming(appropriate actions).*
So in the words of Turbine its ok to Cheat?

[Sapience]

*Very lengthy discussions on Multi-Boxing (not a violation) and Rank Farming(appropriate actions).*
So in the words of Turbine its ok to Cheat?

Multi-boxing isn't cheating in and of itself. If I log in two characters and I shift items between them I am multi-boxing. Who, or what, did I cheat?

If you haven't noticed, the launcher gives you the option to enable multiple clients at once on the same PC.

[Grieyls]

Hmmm, last time I tried the open multiple clients option in the launcher it kept on opening new ones till my puter crashed.... I'm too scared to try again

[Eartholloth]

If I log in two characters and I shift items between them I am multi-boxing. Who, or what, did I cheat?

If you haven't noticed, the launcher gives you the option to enable multiple clients at once on the same PC.

I actually do this. Better then sending stuff in the mail. LOL

[xandervix_tog]

Hmmm, last time I tried the open multiple clients option in the launcher it kept on opening new ones till my puter crashed.... I'm too scared to try again

You can fix that by un-checking "Show the launcher in the system tray"

[Grieyls]

Does this emote no longer mean what I say is in part a jest?

[TheCrossbow]

Multi-boxing isn't cheating in and of itself. If I log in two characters and I shift items between them I am multi-boxing. Who, or what, did I cheat?

If you haven't noticed, the launcher gives you the option to enable multiple clients at once on the same PC.

Its OK Sapience. There are some people who will never get over the fact that running 2 clients at the same time is not cheating. There are many of us who do it and don't abuse it for anything negative. But, as with other "issues", you will never convince some people because they are too willfully ignorant of the facts that speak against them.

Heck, so you take away being able to run 2 clients on the same computer... what is to stop someone from setting up 2 computers side-by-side to achieve the same result?

By the way, as a dual-boxer myself, I confess to being so evil and selfish about my dual-boxing that I will fill up the mail boxes of my kinmates with a ton of crafting materials and other items. Yes, so evil that I *share* the wealth that overflows in my loot bags!

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Heck, so you take away being able to run 2 clients on the same computer... what is to stop someone from setting up 2 computers side-by-side to achieve the same result?

At one time some gaming companies only allowed one client per IP address. If you wanted to play the game with two PCs as husband and wife team, it wasn't possible. You had to take turns.

Over time the number of families that gamed together became so large, that gaming companies no longer placed restrictions on the number of clients from a single IP address. There are ways to get around the single client per PC restriction. There are ways to get around the single client per IP address restriction.

[MessyR]

Multi-boxing isn't cheating in and of itself. If I log in two characters and I shift items between them I am multi-boxing. Who, or what, did I cheat?

If you haven't noticed, the launcher gives you the option to enable multiple clients at once on the same PC.

Your taking far to long "discussing" rank farming. Its killing pvp along side other things, your loosing dedicated creeps/freeps to this nonsense, its pathetic how long turbine take on these clear cheaters.

[Sapience]

Your taking far to long "discussing" rank farming. Its killing pvp along side other things, your loosing dedicated creeps/freeps to this nonsense, its pathetic how long turbine take on these clear cheaters.

I wish it were clear. We ran multiple tests and discoverd if we used the suggestions we found on the forums we could very quickly ban most of the honest pvmp players, especially the most dedicated and active while missing the majority of the farmers. I would like to think people want responsible, reliable action and not lynch mob, knee jerk reactions.

And I'll make this very clear right now, we are only talking Rank farming. Not multi-boxing. Multi-boxing is not a violation and no action will be taken against people who are not breaking rules. Period.

[Startrekman1of9]

Has Turbine given up on the idea of changing the loot system that has made so many players unhappy (as they have stated on these forums). This seems like a major weakness/flaw in Lotro now - unless you think there is no place for character gear advancement and challenging group content in the game.

I know alot of Players like me that love the new systrem but to be sure do you mean the loot bag that holds everything before you take it to inventory? I like that and many others do also.

[Lethareth]

Multi-boxing is fun. I've seen someone on Firefoot running around with a full fellowship, and it was all him. Was pretty cool to see. He just had afk messages on all his characters that were on follow, with a message to talk to the player that was in control of them all.

I've multi-boxed a few times myself, and it's fun, except when I tried to port with my other character, and forgot to click over on the other computer to accept the teleport and left my poor noob stranded, lol.

[TheCrossbow]

Your taking far to long "discussing" rank farming. Its killing pvp along side other things, your loosing dedicated creeps/freeps to this nonsense, its pathetic how long turbine take on these clear cheaters.

Sapience already answered some about this but something to keep in mind...

The problem is not with the multi-boxing but with the ability to farm rep and rank up quickly. And, what people seem to repeatedly miss is that any 2 people could collaborate to do what the guys with "freavers" are doing.

When City of Heroes was around, they had (what I think) was a pretty nifty system of "diminishing returns" in place. That meant that killing the same guy over and over was less productive than killing 10 different people. And, even then, if you killed even the same 10 people over and over within a short amount of time the reputation you got diminished... and eventually you would get no reputation or kill credit at all. Granted you could still "farm" someone for reputation, but the system forced you to vary your targets if you wanted to increase your rep faster.

Perhaps that kind of system would be worth looking at.

[Fredelas]

Sapience already answered some about this but something to keep in mind...

The problem is not with the multi-boxing but with the ability to farm rep and rank up quickly. And, what people seem to repeatedly miss is that any 2 people could collaborate to do what the guys with "freavers" are doing.

When City of Heroes was around, they had (what I think) was a pretty nifty system of "diminishing returns" in place. That meant that killing the same guy over and over was less productive than killing 10 different people. And, even then, if you killed even the same 10 people over and over within a short amount of time the reputation you got diminished... and eventually you would get no reputation or kill credit at all. Granted you could still "farm" someone for reputation, but the system forced you to vary your targets if you wanted to increase your rep faster.

Perhaps that kind of system would be worth looking at.

LOTRO had diminishing returns on renown and infamy for most of its lifetime. There were a few issues with this system. First, it puts less active servers at a disadvantage. Those players effectively got punished twice, because not only were there fewer opponents to engage with, but they would also get disproportionately less reward from those repeated engagements.

Secondly, it required the combat system to track a much larger amount of data for a much longer time. A lot of lookups and calculations were needed every time a player died. This had a small but noticeable impact on the fluidity of combat, and disproportionately affected the more active servers where large battles were common.

There are effective solutions to rank farming, but I imagine diminishing returns would be a last resort, given how they have performed in the past for LOTRO.

[Mirnir]

And I'll make this very clear right now, we are only talking Rank farming.

Is the discussion only about appropriate punishment? Or are there plans to make the activity less appealing? It seems very rewarding at the moment if you can get away with it. People are always likely to push at the rules if the prize is enticing enough.

[Amrundir]

Over time the number of families that gamed together became so large, that gaming companies no longer placed restrictions on the number of clients from a single IP address. There are ways to get around the single client per PC restriction. There are ways to get around the single client per IP address restriction.

These days, with the lack of IPv4 addresses, internet providers use internal IP adresses (10.x.x.x) for their customers and connect them through one gateway to the internet. So all customers of that provider have the same (official) IP address.

Programmers could find other ways to restrict one client per PC. Check running processes or submit the MAC address to the server. There are ways to circumvent these restrictions, too.

[Sapience]

Is the discussion only about appropriate punishment? Or are there plans to make the activity less appealing? It seems very rewarding at the moment if you can get away with it. People are always likely to push at the rules if the prize is enticing enough.

The discussions have been very broad. Everyting from "is it wrong" to "define it", to "how harsh should penalties be".

Here's a question for you. What if we discover that someone who is a highly respected PvMP player is secretly farming rank on another server? Or farms rank on a character other players might not know about? Because we are not, under any circumstances, going to publish a list or 'evidence' (there will be no public shaming, just like we don't allow you guys to do it).. what happens when we ban that player?

And no this is not a hypothetical question.

[Milithion]

The discussions have been very broad. Everyting from "is it wrong" to "define it", to "how harsh should penalties be".

Here's a question for you. What if we discover that someone who is a highly respected PvMP player is secretly farming rank on another server? Or farms rank on a character other players might not know about? Because we are not, under any circumstances, going to publish a list or 'evidence' (there will be no public shaming, just like we don't allow you guys to do it).. what happens when we ban that player?

And no this is not a hypothetical question.

I would be very happy about this, even if i know the guy since 6 years, and i play with him every day.

There is no place for cheaters. Its that simple.

The cheating must be confirmed by an GM who observed him, and it should happen in 3 steps: first time warming, second 3 days ban, third lifetime ban.

[NukeTheLag]

Sapience already answered some about this but something to keep in mind...

The problem is not with the multi-boxing but with the ability to farm rep and rank up quickly. And, what people seem to repeatedly miss is that any 2 people could collaborate to do what the guys with "freavers" are doing.

When City of Heroes was around, they had (what I think) was a pretty nifty system of "diminishing returns" in place. That meant that killing the same guy over and over was less productive than killing 10 different people. And, even then, if you killed even the same 10 people over and over within a short amount of time the reputation you got diminished... and eventually you would get no reputation or kill credit at all. Granted you could still "farm" someone for reputation, but the system forced you to vary your targets if you wanted to increase your rep faster.

Perhaps that kind of system would be worth looking at.

I wish they would look at this with respect to instances as well. In CoH the number of barter tokens awarded kept decreasing the more someone did the same task force repeatedly in a given period of time. So there was an incentive to run different stuff as opposed to running Sambrog over and over.

[Fredelas]

The discussions have been very broad. Everyting from "is it wrong" to "define it", to "how harsh should penalties be".

Here's a question for you. What if we discover that someone who is a highly respected PvMP player is secretly farming rank on another server? Or farms rank on a character other players might not know about? Because we are not, under any circumstances, going to publish a list or 'evidence' (there will be no public shaming, just like we don't allow you guys to do it).. what happens when we ban that player?

And no this is not a hypothetical question.

I say get rid of the "no public shaming" policy. It's not the mere presence of rules that act as a deterrent, it's their visible enforcement. Let players sling the mud, too. Yes, there could be a lot of name-calling and internet insults, but if this community is as great as everyone says, the peer pressure will end up doing more good than harm. If players are passionate about something, let them get it all out in the open!

And if a player decides to publicly contest some disciplinary action, Turbine should feel free to publicly defend that disciplinary action. It's inevitable that Turbine will make a few mistakes, and it's not going to kill the company to occasionally be held publicly accountable, too. It's humanizing. And it will lead to Turbine making even better and more accurate decisions in the future. If Turbine is afraid of losing some popularity contest because of a well-known player, I'd wager that any players who cared about that would ignore the evidence anyway.

[Milithion]

Multi-boxing isn't cheating in and of itself. If I log in two characters and I shift items between them I am multi-boxing. Who, or what, did I cheat?

If you haven't noticed, the launcher gives you the option to enable multiple clients at once on the same PC.

what you are doing is using multiple accounts. that is not even close to multi-boxing, in the definition it is known to me.

multi-boxing (for me, and maybe lots of others) is the usage of multiple characters on multiple clients who are controlled by one person to preform identical actions at the exact same time.

eg: having 6 hunter on 6 clients controlled synchronously by one player. You will now see 6 hunters doing the exact same thing, using same skills, moving the same way etc. so one keydown will be the same skill at each of the 6 hunters. and that is cheating.

multi-boxing for me has nothing to do with having multiple clients open, where I only control one characters at the same time while the others do not get new commands while i control the one.

[MarkoftheRealm]

The discussions have been very broad. Everyting from "is it wrong" to "define it", to "how harsh should penalties be".

Here's a question for you. What if we discover that someone who is a highly respected PvMP player is secretly farming rank on another server? Or farms rank on a character other players might not know about? Because we are not, under any circumstances, going to publish a list or 'evidence' (there will be no public shaming, just like we don't allow you guys to do it).. what happens when we ban that player?

And no this is not a hypothetical question.

Well, first you have to come up with a definition. Nobody should be banned if a clear definition hasn't been published yet. Once it's published, anything that happened prior to publication shouldn't be used against a player, only actions going forward.

It's the person, not the character that should be banned. Which characters a player is violating the CoC or ToS with, or on what servers they're doing so, is completely irrelevant imo. Obviously there needs to be an appeals process. First ban shouldn't be permanent so as to give the player one final chance to shape up.

I PvP maybe once every two months and my highest rank is 6 on my Spider and 5 on my Captain. So I'm giving my thoughts as somewhat of an outsider.

[Tarenius]

The discussions have been very broad. Everyting from "is it wrong" to "define it", to "how harsh should penalties be".

Here's a question for you. What if we discover that someone who is a highly respected PvMP player is secretly farming rank on another server? Or farms rank on a character other players might not know about? Because we are not, under any circumstances, going to publish a list or 'evidence' (there will be no public shaming, just like we don't allow you guys to do it).. what happens when we ban that player?

And no this is not a hypothetical question.

Short ban first time, perma ban second time. It makes no difference what rank they are, if they are 'respected' or not (hopefully not if people are aware they rank farm) or what character it's on.

[timmyloo22546]

The discussions have been very broad. Everyting from "is it wrong" to "define it", to "how harsh should penalties be".

Here's a question for you. What if we discover that someone who is a highly respected PvMP player is secretly farming rank on another server? Or farms rank on a character other players might not know about? Because we are not, under any circumstances, going to publish a list or 'evidence' (there will be no public shaming, just like we don't allow you guys to do it).. what happens when we ban that player?

And no this is not a hypothetical question.

What is a person doing wrong by farming? No one has given a solid answer to what farming is. When person "X" gives his definition of farming then person "Y" gives an example that will result in "X's" friends being farmers and receiving the same consequences as others and now person "X" no longer likes that definition of farming. Everyone has different play-styles. Why punish 1 over the other?