Anyone else out there playing two accounts at once?

For lots of varied reasons, I prefer to solo. Being an MMO, COH is actually pretty solo-friendly.

I’ve just started playing two characters at once in two windowed instances, one on each of my dual monitors. I’ve found with a powerful machine and the graphic options cranked down, performance is fine.

Have found it great fun to experiment with combos of characters – sort of classic in superhero lore. Though I do wish COH allowed this on one account instead of two – I’d be happy to pay for that. Masterminds are fun but I hate not being able to customize my pets. Would love to see AI for pets in general beefed up similar to other games where you can actually set a ‘pecking’ order of actions to guide the AI. Or the option for hirelings or the like.

Anyone else out there playing two characters at once?

Any tips from anyone else?…. Things I’ve found:

1) Follow is rather stupid, but if you stick to flat roads, or low inclines you can get both through a zone okay.
2) Team inspirations are an incredible boon if one of your chars isn’t a Defender or no heal.
3) Great way to level a squishy character you’re experimenting with.
4) Queued actions are great! Queue up an attack on one char then switch to another.

Suddenly I have found COH actually takes a little strategy working with the two chars at once.

Follow with Fly or Hover on works much better than follow on foot. Follow with Group Fly can work well too, provided that the character doing the following is at least as fast than the character being maneuvered.

Try putting an attack on autofire and targeting the character you primarily tend to control. When the character you're controlling targets an enemy, the one with the autofire power will use it on said enemy once in range (but beware of hitting enemies you're not ready for, or accidentally targeting someone the next group over when the autofire power is charged)

I actually run both my instances full screen with the graphics cranked up. Every now and then something wonky happens and one instance has its FPS go to hell in a hand basket, but that seriously happens like once a month.

I don't really actively play two instances all that often. I do like having the second character using flight, as this makes /follow more reasonable. As long as the terrain isn't too complex though, there's some lag between clients that allows you to do some neat things even with a ground-pounding follower, getting them to angle around corners and such. I find it easy to alt-tab between them if the 2nd one gets stuck.

I don't like to turn graphics down so I tend to run one account on my laptop and one on my main computer, and the laptop is slow. So I mostly do this for PLing one account.

In any case, my favorite toons can solo +2/8 so I don't need the 2nd account to help me accomplish more per se. ^_^ But I do have a freebie account and two cheapo premium accounts (one bought during the VIP head start sale in August, one bought for 99 cents this weekend) that primarily exist so that I could hypothetically start a TF on my own and then solo it... if I can manage to run all four accounts at once.

A friend of mine "solo'd" Doctor Quaterfield this weekend. Well, I'm not sure he's quite done yet. There are several missions in there with 4-person simultaneous clicks, where he has to have all four accounts logged in at once (and windowed so he can click everything quickly enough). I don't know if anyone's tried a solo Dr. Q before. ^_^

I do when I want to PL a toon, but other than that I prefer to actually group or just solo.

I develop the second character as a wonky side kick. I don't give them many attacks and just concentrate on support services. I give them both super jump and super speed for quick travel then get recall friend. That way they can zoom to missions and teleport my main to the door. They also get stealth so if I choose they can stealth a mission and teleport my main to the end fight. In mission I usually auto one attack on them, leave super speed running and put them on follow. I just play my main and only need to flip over to get them through elevators or other tricky areas. With super speed going they keep up and avoid many of the places where they get stuck.

Really great for alignment merits, run two toons through the tips and score two alignment merits every two days rather then one. Masterminds are really great for this as their pets can add a lot of damage and they have great support powers. Of course the pets can aggro an entire map since you are not directly controlling them so you need to be able to handle that.

I was running a dual box set up (2 computers, 1 main one and 1 older one with graphics turned way down)for almost 2 years (2 paid accounts) and when freedom launched I started triple boxing using my lap top. I have a blast trying to run all 3 at the same time and I have made a few free accounts as well so I can start my own TFs. I have the other accounts on follow and autofire an attack. Generally the 2 other accounts are buff/debuff toons.

I run two accounts on two machines running an IP KVM software to move controls between the two. It has some quirks but works pretty smooth. I do that and have an external number pad on the second machine for easeof activating powers.

I don't actually *play* more than one character at the same time normally, but I did play two or three in the same mission, focusing on one at a time with the others doing nothing or autofiring, when I grabbed Master of ITF for my main. I'm thinking of quad running a Master of Cuda (5th) at some point, but I'm still contemplating the details. The trick is figuring out what set of characters will work the best together if you can only actually play one of them at any one moment, and all the others basically have to be on autopilot most of the time. That's not the same thing as what set of characters would be best together if all were piloted by actual players.

As to any tips, well, I usually make sure to turn teleport prompting off and make sure my assisting characters have recall: that makes it easier to move things around, particularly in maps that follow just doesn't work very well in (i.e. tunnels).

Had a guy in our network (Smurphy, many know him) who fielded six accounts running characters all named NEMESIS ClONE with variations of the 'i' 'I', which looks the same in-game.

They were all Thugs/(some buff/debuff set) MMs who used Gang War. Let's just say, it was a little wacky to watch.

Yeah, I've been dual boxing for a few years now, just created account number 3 with the 0.99 special. Can never have too many toons!

I dual boxed a 26 min speed ITF with 5 other friends. I prefer to not dual box on TFs, but it was late, and there weren't many players on.

A lot of folks have made good suggestions already.

My setup is:
Main toon:
- run on desktop
- has Recall friend. If support gets stuck, recall him.
- When moving support toon, set 1 power on auto-hit to give the illusion that it's working.

Support toon:
- run on laptop
- set on follow.
- has Recall friend. Use to move fallen comrades from battle while Main is on auto-hit.
- has Superspeed or Ninja run
- has Invisibility and/or Phase shift. Used to keep the support safe when there is a lot of agro.
- 1 auto-hit power, usually a heal or a long range attack
- if squishy, stop follow out of range of agro radius and use long range attacks.


There are a few people who dislike dual-boxers, so my toons sometimes talk to each other. ;D
I've been dual-boxing for more than a year, and only a handful of people have guessed that I'm playing 2 toons.

Thanks all for your responses.... Really good advice. My mastermind with pets and Defender working together with auto-attack, pets on aggressive and recall friend are eating red bosses for breakfast.
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This thread is making me even consider getting a second account to run. I used to play another MMORPG called Dark Age of Chamelot and I did run two accounts once. I had a main account with whatever I wanted to mainly play, then I had a second account with only a cleric, which was like a defender and a Friar, which is like a scrapper with some buffing ability. But most buffs in that game lasted at least ten minutes each.

The deal breaker for me in this game so far is the short duration of most buffs. I don't think they got one that last longer than two minutes at a time. Not sure. But thats a turn off for me because I don't want to have to keep going back and forth to rebuff every 30 seconds. I like to check on the other toon once every 4-5 minutes.
Also, the only archetype I am ever going to play these days is Brute with the exception of Night Widow/Fortunata Dual Build and my Crab Spider. They do fine in solo play without the need for a defender to keep buffing them.

But whats making me change my mind is the tier 4 incarnate abilities. They have a great recharge time and last a decent amount of time making them ok to autofire or something. Also I can make a Mastermind and a Brute on the other account to help me PL my own brutes and veats. Thats a good idea since I love Brute and the Veats so much.

I can just simply have the Mastermind summon the pets and set them to aggressive, buff my brute or veat, have the mastermind stand still nearby and have the brute or the Veat pull the mobs to the mastermind! Might work with fire controllers, too! This is something to consider.

I've tried to dual box, and my computer cannot handle the stress. Just moving from one zone to another was enough to lose the connection and mapserver out or timeout during the zone load.

However, I got a Laptop last Christmas and while it's nowhere near a gaming laptop, it CAN run CoH with most of the graphics on minimum (and a few things like Character Detail at 100) and have a respectable framerate.

Since my 2nd account is brand new and it's just a Premium account, I only have 2 character slots. But with the free points I had on it I was able to afford unlocking the MM, which worked out perfectly.

I use MM sets that are pretty much fire and forget, currently favoring Robot/Forcefields. My 'sidekick' uses a Perma-Hover build with a lot of toggles like full Leadership, no personal attacks, and he acts as fire support for my main. Put him on follow while hovering, the bots on Attack/Aggressive, and bubble up as needed.

It makes an effective (if simple) backup for my toons, either providing extra damage for my main Dark Defender, or the damage and bonus +Def my Stone Tanker needs. Even one of my other MM's gets plenty of help, his build being a Robot/Thermal, so between the Bubble and Fire shields the small army of bots is pretty well protected.

Granted, controlling the 2nd account's bots requires more dexterity than I have, which is why I've favored Bots so far (and will try Demon if I get enough money to get more character slots). They have a good amount of survivability with their self bubble, heals, and fair resistances.