I admit I didn't search for this because times are a-changin' and my usage might be a bit unusual maybe. So here I am asking you folks. My favourite MMO recently went free to play, which means that I can now 6-box - which means that I can basically load the game 6 times on my computer, each running their own character, and I can play all 6 characters together at the same time. It's very intense and lots of fun. But each one also uses just over 1gig of RAM, and with a few bits in the background, I end up very close to my 8gig limit - according to task manager. I'm planning on buying a powerful graphics card in the new year and I wondered whether maybe I should upgrade to 12 gig of RAM too? It's £61 currently which doesn't seem too bad but I'm already going to be spending a fortune on some other things, so if I can just make do with 8, I would prefer to. What do you think? Do you think games like Arma3, X:Rebirth, Crysis3, and whatever else might come my way over the next year would benefit from more than 8gig of ram? I saw someone on the Arma2 forum who insisted that 16gig gave him a big improvement over 8gig. Not sure if he was mistaken or imagining it or what. But if he is right, then maybe I would be best to go to 12gig while I have my case in bits. Thanks =)
More RAM won't benefit anything if you don't use it. No game uses more than 2-4GB. The guy on the Arma2 forum doesn't know what he's talking about. Multiple instances of a game might benefit from more RAM though. You could try it with 8GB first, and if Windows starts swapping, get more.
How on earth can you even attempt to play 6 characters at a time? Do they all hang out in the same area? Whats the benefit?
It's a case of getting software to emulate a key press on all 6 instances of the game at the same time. When moving around one character will lead and the other 5 will follow. If grouped in a party together, the characters will be able to kill enemies much much quicker and gain experience. The name for it is multiboxing.
I played with a guy in City of Heroes who ran with 5 or 6 Masterminds on his multi-box setup. This is the AT that requires the most amount of micromanagement. Not sure how he did it, but he would basically use 1 primary character to team teleport his Masterminds + 6 pets per mastermind into the middle of an enemy group and they would essentially just melt everything.
Considering there are people who can play 24 tables of poker at once for a profit and also considering the insane APM some RTS players can achieve I can just about believe someone being able to play 6 MMO characters at once well. I can't believe it is any fun though Back to your original question though, I highly doubt any game coming out in the next couple yesrs will be bottlenecked at 8GB of RAM. Once you start playing multiple games or running multiple VM's I can see it being justifiable to upgrade though.
It's a bit of a grey area. But technically, they have 6 different accounts, so the MMO is getting their money (unless it's F2P of course). The harder version is playing 6 different character types. Then you have to strategically place your abilities on the hotkeys, ie the "1" key might be swing sword on one character, heal on another, shield allies on a third, etc. Lots of videos on Youtube if you want to watch. Pretty interesting (although I've never done it myself).
It's surprisingly easy actually and so much fun! You just group them all together, and have them all auto follow the tank. Then I have a macro on my mouse that alt tabs through each client one by one, so I don't have to worry about pressing alt tab the right number of times to reach the right character etc. So I just run up to a mob, hit it with my tank, and then press my alt tab button and attack with the next character, and repeat. Takes like 6 seconds to attack with all 6 characters. At that point they are all engaged and auto-attacking, and then I can just focus on one character do whatever needs doing. And then with practice you can quickly whiz through to each character and click whatever spells you need to cast like healing spell or a big nuke or whatever. And also later in the game the enemies have so many HP it means fights last a long time so you have plenty of time to do think and do stuff. It's amazing fun! It's like playing Baldur's Gate or something but in real time, and with an enormous world and massive longevity etc. And yeah it's allowed (in most games anyway), because you are only doing what you could do in a group anyway, but less efficient than with 6 real people. And in sandbox/none-competitive MMO's you don't get an upper hand over anyone anyway. It is quite anti social though if you just play the whole game by yourself and never group with real people. And also in none 'instanced' games like the one I play, it wouldn't be very nice or fair to go to group content by myself when there is a group of 6 real people who want to do it too. But in those cases I just go somewhere else because I don't want to get in anyones way and the world is enormous anyway. It's not for everyone though, it can be pretty stressful. And also like I said, it uses almost all 8 of my gigs!
I know absolutely nothing about these types of game, but what I do know is RAM is so cheap at the moment, it would be rude not upgrade.
SW:TOR? If you are only playing on one client and the others are just afk, then the it is usually okay (but kinda frowned upon) If you are controlling the characters on all clients at once, then it is usually classed as "botting" and hacking/exploiting and is almost always against the ToS / ToU. Some Mods/GMs/Devs are kinda lax though.
Thanks guys, I think I'll stick to 8gig for now and go to 12 only when I need to. This is the game I love if anyone was interested, highly recommended:link
