Autofollow Distance

[Blambil]

<p>Is there any way I'm not aware of in game, at the moment, to control autofollow distance? I 2 box a lot, and more and more I'm finding weaker/lower level characters, in autofollow, getting killed from being too close to the fight, either from frontals, PBAOE's, etc.... Other games I've played had a set-able autofollow distance...</p>

[Yimway]

<p>No.  Eq2 does not allow for this.</p><p>I've suggested in various autofollow threads over the year that there should be an optional parameter to the /follow command:</p><p>/follow <name> <distance></p><p>or</p><p>/follow Atan 5</p>

[Blambil]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No.  Eq2 does not allow for this.</p><p>I've suggested in various autofollow threads over the year that there should be an optional parameter to the /follow command:</p><p>/follow</p><p>or</p><p>/follow Atan 5</p></blockquote><p>Outstanding idea...  </p><p>I wouldn't even so much care if it was a number -- just a couple of presets would be nice... "close, far" etc.</p>

[feldon30]

It was changed, I guess about a year ago, to the current "so close I can tell which aftershave you use" distance.

[das2000uk]

<p>+1 for this and i dont think something like that would be to hard to script.</p><p>I three box and im fed up with my wiz and fury getting battered by AOE damage its so annoying, and i cant be bothered to position them further back for every fight.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>das2000uk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I three box and im fed up with my wiz and fury getting battered by AOE damage its so annoying, and i cant be bothered to position them further back for every fight.</p></blockquote><p>Honestly, looking at the decisions SoE is making, I honestly believe they are conciously trying to discourage/prevent multiboxing. So, I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing follow changed.</p>

[das2000uk]

<p>Yeah, your probably right, however it would be a huge mistake on their behalf to discourage or prevent multi boxing.  Instead of £9.49 per month they're getting £28.47 from me, cant see any logic in preventing it.</p><p>I know alot of boxers out there and it they help generate easy money for SOE.  If anything they should encourage it.</p>

[Drumstix]

<p>Unless they believe multi-boxing prevents people from interacting with each other as much, which in turn causes players to be more bored than usual, which causes those players to stop playing the game.</p><p>Sorry was that a run-on sentence? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> I don't believe they'll actively discourage it, but I don't really see them going out of their way to make it easier either.</p>

[das2000uk]

<p>I do see the reason behind discouraging multiboxing and the post above hits the nail on the head.  I know they are addressing the situation regarding interacting etc by merging, they havent got round to my server yet.  But i do think that soe could be missing a trick with multi account holders.  Any hoo we digress but i do agree with the OP however i dont think they will implament it though.</p>

[Embret]

<p>Ironically, when I 2 or 3-box the following distance is much too close, but for my Conjuror's pet the following distance is much too far.  If I had a dollar for each time I've been jumped and had my pet on the other side of the zone picking his nose I'd be rich.  Yeah, I know they added a button to bring him to me, however, I still think it's ignorant (I had another word referring to backing off the timing on a vehicle, but apparently the SS doesn't like that word.) how far the pets follow.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>das2000uk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yeah, your probably right, however it would be a huge mistake on their behalf to discourage or prevent multi boxing.  Instead of £9.49 per month they're getting £28.47 from me, cant see any logic in preventing it.</p><p>I know alot of boxers out there and it they help generate easy money for SOE.  If anything they should encourage it.</p></blockquote><p>How does someone 6 boxing free accounts work out to SoE's best interests?  When the current producer believes the future of the game is in the F2P marketplace, I can see how multiboxing becomes a liability vs an encouraged pastime.</p><p>The changes to patchers and clients are only going to make boxing more difficult.  This isn't the beta forums, but try boxing in beta right now, its a rather annoying setup to go thru to say the least.</p>

[Eveningsong]

<p><cite>Nehamiah@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ironically, when I 2 or 3-box the following distance is much too close, but for my Conjuror's pet the following distance is much too far.  If I had a dollar for each time I've been jumped and had my pet on the other side of the zone picking his nose I'd be rich.  Yeah, I know they added a button to bring him to me, however, I still think it's ignorant (I had another word referring to backing off the timing on a vehicle, but apparently the SS doesn't like that word.) how far the pets follow.</p></blockquote><p>I'm hoping the pet distance will be fixed when they make the changes where pets will receive their owner's buffs.  No more worrying about sow for Fluffy, which still wasn't fast enough for him to keep up <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.</p>

[Nrgy]

<p><cite>Eveningsong wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm hoping the pet distance will be fixed when they make the changes where pets will receive their owner's buffs.  No more worrying about sow for Fluffy, which still wasn't fast enough for him to keep up <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />.</p></blockquote><p>I agree the pets should 'Match' the summoner speed regardless.  That added with the mechanics of a caster pet, where they plant themselves where ever they are as soon as combat starts, is truely annoying.  When you come around a corner and get jumped and the pet is out of LOS and just stands there is the worst.  Not to mention when your mount speed is >= 80% and you dust the pet halfway across the zone.</p><p>As for dragging around an auto-following 2boxer, they follow the same basic game mechanics.  They plant themselves as soon as they start casting.  So, once you know this you can use it to what ever advantage you see fit.  If your SK (you know you have one) is enganging and your 2boxer is auto-following then move the fight further up the hallway.  Or you can always have a macro button to >auto-follow Off< that you hit just before you engage the mobs.  Easy enough to deal with one way or another.</p><p>If you're inside they follow close so you are <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>less likely</strong></span> to peel them off on a corner, if you're outside who cares.  They could follow even closer and I'd be alright with it.  Now if you could get them to mirror the jump action I would be down with that!!</p>

[das2000uk]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>das2000uk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yeah, your probably right, however it would be a huge mistake on their behalf to discourage or prevent multi boxing.  Instead of £9.49 per month they're getting £28.47 from me, cant see any logic in preventing it.</p><p>I know alot of boxers out there and it they help generate easy money for SOE.  If anything they should encourage it.</p></blockquote><p>How does someone 6 boxing free accounts work out to SoE's best interests?  When the current producer believes the future of the game is in the F2P marketplace, I can see how multiboxing becomes a liability vs an encouraged pastime.</p><p>The changes to patchers and clients are only going to make boxing more difficult.  This isn't the beta forums, but try boxing in beta right now, its a rather annoying setup to go thru to say the least.  </p></blockquote><p>Im not talking FREE accounts im talking about fully subscribed memberships and as far as im concerned F2P is not the way to go anyway. Dont forget people with more than one account have to by expansions more than once, as well as pay double,triple,quadruple etc per month.  This is easy money for soe in my opinion.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>das2000uk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>How does someone 6 boxing free accounts work out to SoE's best interests?  When the current producer believes the future of the game is in the F2P marketplace, I can see how multiboxing becomes a liability vs an encouraged pastime.</p><p>The changes to patchers and clients are only going to make boxing more difficult.  This isn't the beta forums, but try boxing in beta right now, its a rather annoying setup to go thru to say the least.  </p></blockquote><p>Im not talking FREE accounts im talking about fully subscribed memberships and as far as im concerned F2P is not the way to go anyway. Dont forget people with more than one account have to by expansions more than once, as well as pay double,triple,quadruple etc per month.  This is easy money for soe in my opinion.</p></blockquote><p>Your preaching to the choir here, but you need to examine the producer and leaderships goals with eq2 and decide if that still includes encouraging multiboxing.</p><p>A 18 months ago, I would agree with you 100%, in fact direct contact with SoE leadership confirmed this for me.  However, since then I have severe doubts.  Not to mention that all the people that confirmed that for me at SoE are no longer there now.</p>

[Blambil]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 10.8333px; ">How does someone 6 boxing free accounts work out to SoE's best interests?  When the current producer believes the future of the game is in the F2P marketplace, I can see how multiboxing becomes a liability vs an encouraged pastime.</span></p></blockquote><p>In my opinion, the more into the game someone is, the more accounts they have, the less likely they are to be a "free" player... (those powerleveling and selling characters, perhaps) I spend a considerable amount every year to PLAY.. and every one of my characters, whether being active on my mouse, or autofollow, is a paying customer.</p>

[Ritten]

<p>Bump!</p><p>Especially with the giants in DoV now, but also for duoing old raid content it would be nice if I can have my healer follow at a little bit more distance to make positioning a little bit easier.</p>

[Raknid]

<p>I wonder how hard it would be to simply allow the assigning of pet type controls to a character on follow so that the same UI is used? Have a popbox that would ask the character of course and let it be cancellable by either partty. Sounds pretty complicated though sadly, but it would be nice to be able to set the distance, or at least have a couple different choices like /Follow_close /Follow_mid /Follow_far.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Raknid wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I wonder how hard it would be to simply allow the assigning of pet type controls to a character on follow so that the same UI is used? Have a popbox that would ask the character of course and let it be cancellable by either partty. Sounds pretty complicated though sadly, but it would be nice to be able to set the distance, or at least have a couple different choices like /Follow_close /Follow_mid /Follow_far.</p></blockquote><p>I am certain there is a hard coded follow distance in their follow function.  It really shouldn't be difficult to allow us to overide that value with an optional paramater to the follow command line...</p>

[Raknid]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Raknid wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I wonder how hard it would be to simply allow the assigning of pet type controls to a character on follow so that the same UI is used? Have a popbox that would ask the character of course and let it be cancellable by either partty. Sounds pretty complicated though sadly, but it would be nice to be able to set the distance, or at least have a couple different choices like /Follow_close /Follow_mid /Follow_far.</p></blockquote><p>I am certain there is a hard coded follow distance in their follow function.  It really shouldn't be difficult to allow us to overide that value with an optional paramater to the follow command line...</p></blockquote><p>Dang. I just realized I said UI when I meant AI. Agreed though with you Atan, they should be able to allow us to change it freeform, mine was just a suggestion if they didn't want to let go totally of the control.</p>

[Tallithia]

<p>I dont understand using auto follow.  I rarely use it myself.</p>

[Cloudrat]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>das2000uk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I three box and im fed up with my wiz and fury getting battered by AOE damage its so annoying, and i cant be bothered to position them further back for every fight.</p></blockquote><p>Honestly, looking at the decisions SoE is making, I honestly believe they are conciously trying to discourage/prevent multiboxing. So, I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing follow changed.</p></blockquote><p>I thought it was to keep my boxed toons from getting stuck on stuff because it was so far behind and yes the down side to this is dead boxed toons from aoes hehe</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Cloudrat wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Honestly, looking at the decisions SoE is making, I honestly believe they are conciously trying to discourage/prevent multiboxing. So, I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing follow changed.</p></blockquote><p>I thought it was to keep my boxed toons from getting stuck on stuff because it was so far behind and yes the down side to this is dead boxed toons from aoes hehe</p></blockquote><p>Ack, post necro!</p><p>I was refering to changes to the patchers, and streaming client durring the last beta that was making running multiple clients extremely difficult.  Had they actually gone live that way, it would have killed boxing and what distance was on /follow would not have mattered =)</p><p>The ability to set the follow distance would allow you to set them really close for tight spaces, and much longer for wide open spaces (like where giants live).</p><p>As a boxer, being able to set this distance between a range of reasonable values (2-30?) would be pure win.</p>