02 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Rules against multiplaying are like rules against playing while drunk. You can only catch the blatant cases, and you'll probably end punishing a few innocent players along the way. The skilled multiplayers (who are the ones you need to worry about) will just conceal what they're doing, making it all the more difficult to fix the real problem - the game design.
02 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I mean allowing more then one character on at a time, it'll have rules of course, some basic things, for clan wars, ect, and if it becoms to much of a problem, just discontinue allowing it, no biggie :P
02 Jun, 2009, Banner wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Rules against multiplaying are like rules against playing while drunk. You can only catch the blatant cases, and you'll probably end punishing a few innocent players along the way. The skilled multiplayers (who are the ones you need to worry about) will just conceal what they're doing, making it all the more difficult to fix the real problem - the game design.
I have a simple function that thwarts it when they attempt to login by comparing hosts, and we also keep all characteres tied to an account and limit you to one account. Even if they escape that, they'd always be following each other around and only one of them would be doing anything. It's not that hard to catch.
02 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
well typing users really tells me everything i need to know, i just want to try it out, ya know, i used to play mushes where people were allowed to multiplay, and it worked well when rules were followed, :)
02 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Banner said:
I have a simple function that thwarts it when they attempt to login by comparing hosts, and we also keep all characteres tied to an account and limit you to one account. Even if they escape that, they'd always be following each other around and only one of them would be doing anything. It's not that hard to catch.

Your login function will likely prevent multiple players from connecting from the same workplace, school or university (and also block certain mud clients) - back when I was running the original God Wars mud we'd frequently fill two or three of the university computer labs with players, and the majority of the other players connected from two other universities. Your "simple function" would have banned about three quarters of my players and all of my staff (including me).

Meanwhile, the serious multiplayers will use a proxy to give each of their characters a different IP address, possibly setting up scripts to help them more easily control multiple characters at the same time. And they wouldn't just be "following each other around" - the characters would appear to be acting independently. Of course they'll do things like exchange equipment, come to each other's help in a fight, perhaps even PK each other for exp (maybe one of them will even whine about being picked on!). Are you going to ban those activities as well, and punish real newbie helpers, actual friends, legitimate PKers, etc at the same time?

As I said, you'll only catch the blatent cases, and probably end up punishing a few innocent players along the way. And the more "big brother" your approach, the more innocent people you'll punish, until eventually they all quit and go play somewhere else. Still, having no players is at least the one way you can be sure there's no multiplaying going on…
02 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Sigh, how many times do we need to go over how one IP != one person…
02 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
This is why i'm just allowing it, go ahead do what you want, i'm putting a limit on three per person, but i'm not to worried, the way i see it, it's another name on the who list *shrug*
02 Jun, 2009, Banner wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Banner said:
I have a simple function that thwarts it when they attempt to login by comparing hosts, and we also keep all characteres tied to an account and limit you to one account. Even if they escape that, they'd always be following each other around and only one of them would be doing anything. It's not that hard to catch.

Your login function will likely prevent multiple players from connecting from the same workplace, school or university (and also block certain mud clients) - back when I was running the original God Wars mud we'd frequently fill two or three of the university computer labs with players, and the majority of the other players connected from two other universities. Your "simple function" would have banned about three quarters of my players and all of my staff (including me).

Meanwhile, the serious multiplayers will use a proxy to give each of their characters a different IP address, possibly setting up scripts to help them more easily control multiple characters at the same time. And they wouldn't just be "following each other around" - the characters would appear to be acting independently. Of course they'll do things like exchange equipment, come to each other's help in a fight, perhaps even PK each other for exp (maybe one of them will even whine about being picked on!). Are you going to ban those activities as well, and punish real newbie helpers, actual friends, legitimate PKers, etc at the same time?

As I said, you'll only catch the blatent cases, and probably end up punishing a few innocent players along the way. And the more "big brother" your approach, the more innocent people you'll punish, until eventually they all quit and go play somewhere else. Still, having no players is at least the one way you can be sure there's no multiplaying going on…
In a MUD with around 10-15 players, I highly doubt that anyone will be connecting from the same workplace, and in the rare event that this has happened, it has not bothered the player to simply speak to me so I may implement my system to allow that one IP to multiplay.

Also, if they are going to write scripts and triggers and proxy their IPs just to attempt to multiplay, I believe I'll have to let them get away with it, because in fourteen years of mud administration, I have not seen such a thing.


David Haley said:
Sigh, how many times do we need to go over how one IP != one person…
See above.
02 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Frenze said:
i'm putting a limit on three per person

No, the limit isn't per person, it's per IP address. So for example, only three players from a particular school might be able to play at once. Likewise, only three total people can play at one time using the MudGamers client.
02 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
I understand how ip adresses work, It's kinda on the honor system really, if you want three characters online you can have them, i'm not saying three per ip adress, three per person is what i'm limiting it to because most people will think they are gettng away with something if they have 4, even though i wont care to much, it's all a mind thing really
02 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Banner said:
In a MUD with around 10-15 players, I highly doubt that anyone will be connecting from the same workplace,

Probably not, but multiple players connecting from the same school or university is far more common - one player starts playing the mud, other students see it on the screen and ask about it, then try it for themselves. That brought me more new players than any other advertising technique I've ever encountered.

Also, while multiplaying is certainly easier to spot the fewer players there are, that's not really a viable long-term solution (unless the mud is specifically intended to be unpopular).

Banner said:
Also, if they are going to write scripts and triggers and proxy their IPs just to attempt to multiplay, I believe I'll have to let them get away with it, because in fourteen years of mud administration, I have not seen such a thing.

Well the whole point of the exercise is that the admin don't see it, so that you just appear to be regular players. The prevalence does depend on the popularity and competitiveness of your mud, though.



Frenze said:
I understand how ip adresses work, It's kinda on the honor system really, if you want three characters online you can have them, i'm not saying three per ip adress, three per person is what i'm limiting it to because most people will think they are gettng away with something if they have 4, even though i wont care to much, it's all a mind thing really

Hrm not sure I follow. Let's say there are 10 people playing your mud using the MudGamers mud client (meaning they all have the same IP address). Are you saying that would be okay?

Now let's say there's another player who has 10 characters, also all connected from the same IP address. Is that okay?
02 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
ok, this is what i mean, open up a few connections and actually play a few characters yourself, thats fine, ten is over board but seeing a 40 person wholist is impressive weather or not there are actually 40 people playing, so when someone new logs on, they see a ton of people so they stay, esentially, it works it's way up, i've seen it work before works for me, i'm not worried about it, let the people have the fun they want to untill it causes problems, i'm fine with it
02 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
So basically you're allowing it as a form of false advertising. :rolleyes:
02 Jun, 2009, Skol wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
One thing you can do to simply monitor IP's is color code the sockets (if you have a socket command that is, didn't know if TBA had that, cousin of Rom and all that). But yeah, even on my game where 20 is a pretty packed house, we'll have 2-3 on a few sockets; mudgamers, mudconnector, and some couples that play. We used to have a lot of duplicate ip's from college, but it seems now that a lot of labs have unique IP's on the comps.

We don't allow multiple connections from the same player, but also try to avoid any big-brothering and such. It becomes pretty apparent if someone actually is skirting things and multiplaying. I find that if I just treat them like adults it's pretty simple, sometimes they get pissy and sometimes they go 'my bad' etc.

Biggest draw I find? Active, visible staff.
02 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Not really, seeing as those characters on do have a player behind them somewhere, not just immortal puppet alts or something but yea… i want the players to have as much fun as they can and if that involves doing that, so be it
02 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
More seriously though: you realize that that's a little dishonest, right? I would be pretty pissed off if I found that a MUD were deliberately causing, or at least allowing, an artificial inflation of the number of reported players. It's generally pretty frowned upon to lie about the number of players.
03 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Well when you log on, and see in the motd, a big yellow thing that reads, Multiplaying is legal someone with moderate intelligence could prolly assume that not all the people online are diffrent people but thats just IMO
03 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, you said that it'd be more like mplay with up to three characters is legal, but you wouldn't do anything about more because it looks good for the who list. So if I log on and see 9 characters, I might assume that means there's at least three people online, whereas it could just mean two. But, well, as long as there's a disclaimer prominently displayed, it's not as bad as it could be.
03 Jun, 2009, Frenze wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Of course i'm gonna let people know that they might be alts, i'm not going to lie about it, the point is for the players to have fun, and just because a mud has 100 players online doesn't make it good, or doesn't make people want to stay, i played one, LOTJ for like a day, they had a ton of players, but i thought it sucked IMO mostly cause i don't like overly complecated garbage making my playing more difficult then it needs to be
03 Jun, 2009, Hades_Kane wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
We don't allow multiplaying.

If two characters are connected from the same IP, we ask them about it. I ask that anyone coming in on a network or with any reason to suspect they are connecting from the same address as someone else to notify us and we add their names and IPs to an imm-only helpfile that we check again. We highlight on the 'sockets' list any IPs that match, and wiznet notifies us of anyone connecting from an address already connected.

Have we ever been lied to? Probably. But ultimately, that's one of those things that is nearly impossible to enforce for someone determined enough.

But, if they hide it well enough, then that really solves the problem that I have with people multiplaying anyway, which is mostly over-inflating the who list and what not. Nothing bugs me more than to log on to a MUD that's populated with 20 characters and only a third or less actually seem to be alive, and I think that's more common in a game that allows or promotes multiplaying.
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