Sandboxing, multilogging… Whatever you want to call it, it is the act of bypassing PMU’s built-in mechanisms for preventing a second client from being opened on the same machine.
The topic has been brought up a few times on Discord, and to my knowledge, it has generally received responses along the lines of “it’s okay as long as you don’t go too crazy”, “It’s okay but don’t do it in events” or “I don’t like it but we can’t stop it.” Full disclosure, In hindsight I feel I went “too crazy.”
Preamble on my motivations and potential conflict of interests:
If you don’t already know, I’ve been one of the players to most heavily make use of multi-logging through sandboxing software, at least to my knowledge. I’ve both consistently dragged an alt with me through most dungeons I run, and I’ve also used it to quickly boost several alts in order to create house shops–as to not have to level each one slowly on its own.
I initially was skeptical about the legality of the practice when I first learned about it, only to be told it was supposedly okay–even after making a half-hearted attempt to argue why I thought it should probably be banned.
I subsequently started making use of sandboxing myself under the (in my hindsight-aided opinion, faulty) logic that “if it’s legal and the strongest option available to me, I should take it.” What I should have done was either to have conducted some light testing and then used it to prove my point, or doubled-down on my earlier reasoning for it warranting being disallowed. Instead, I gave up trying to make a case against it far too quickly, and went off to reap the rewards by indulging in it myself. It was a decision that put my own gains over the health of the game overall.
If staff want to talk about rolling stuff back (obviously including both my main account and the alts that were boosted) or otherwise work to counteract what I gained through sandboxing to multi-log, I do not object. It’s not exactly fair for me to have spent several months benefiting from this only to turn around and walk away scot-free after the practice is officially banned. It’s not likely to be easy to figure out how to handle, and I’m sorry about having helped create the problem in the first place.
Assuming you’ve read the above or just don’t care, let’s now talk about just how abusable I think controlling two or more characters can be.
There are a lot of things sandboxing enables you to do that may not be obvious at first glance. “What’s the point of controlling two characters and taking twice the time to do something for the same rewards as just doing it twice normally?” you might ask, but with a little creativity that extra time spent can be cut down massively.
In a vacuum, moves like Beat Up and Ally Switch (both of which can warp allied players to your current position, with a few minor differences between them) are neat utility options for the player, but they also pose a problem; they can be used to drag a second character controlled by the same player to the stairs in a dungeon–without having to manually spend the time to walk there.
This enables the following, all of which I have been able to do myself:
- Doubling up on endboxes/secret room boxes with much less than double the time spent
- Running Frisk without taking up a pokemon/item slot for treasure specs on your main team
- Running Cloud Nine without having to fit it into your team
- Running Honey Gather (and potentially stacking it)
- Carrying twice as many items if the time is spent to rank the alt up to Master*
- Bringing a backup team into dungeons like TC in case your main team is reduced to its leader (Why wouldn’t you just bring beat up on the alt, too?)
- Training two pokemon at once by hiding the alt in a wall with a ghost/mobile scarf
- Rescuing a defeated player whose guild you are not a part of, but the alt is
- “Soloing” dungeons such as ATD (or even HT if you’re crazy enough to micro-manage three alts)
- Other various shenanigans that would normally require two players coordinating, such as skill swapping unburden onto a sweet scent user to spawn Zorua from a monster house faster.
Sure, you can individually ban any of the above–as has been done with bringing multiple characters to events for extra tokens–but why apply multiple band-aid solutions to allow something the game already tries to prevent by design, and that requires external software to do in the first place? (The same logic applies to nerfing beat up/ally switch instead of banning sandboxing, which are perfectly fine on their own IMO) In literally any other game I know, this would be considered cheating. If we want multi-logging as a feature, then the game shouldn’t try to block it.
There are a few “harmless” uses for sandboxing–such as testing some bugs that require two players, and more easily moving items across characters. But I don’t think preserving these things is enough to warrant a complex set of rules and restrictions being implemented on the practice, as that will always leave room for someone to come up with creative loopholes to exploit and get ahead with. I’ve also heard “how can we ban it if there’s no easy way to enforce it?” as a reason for not taking a stronger official stance, but I don’t think this line of logic holds up under scrutiny, as it boils down to “it’s not cheating if you don’t get caught.”
I’m not saying that we need more preventative measures in place, or that people who have made use of sandboxing after being told it was okay need to be punished. (Though I personally am willing to do my best to forfeit what I’ve gained as one of the more egregiously-prolific users if it is deemed necessary) But I do believe this needs to be ruled one way or the other in terms of being permitted, rather than be left in a gray area of policy–and I’d like to think I’ve made a strong case for why it should be ruled as no longer allowed going forward.
I suspect this is likely to be a controversial subject; if you feel I’ve missed anything, or disagree with any of my points, let’s talk about it. After all, that’s one of the main reasons I put this here over just PMing it to a staff member. Just please, let’s be civil.
And I’m sorry for spawning yet another wall of text.
