Discussion: Command Line Option Changes [Merged]

[Celsith.2753]

I'm very unhappy about this change. If I want a shortcut on my own home pc why on earth shouldn't that be my choice and my risk?

[HiddenRage.7408]

Maybe introduce a better way to replace said feature instead of pulling the rug from under us. Sheesh Anet...Plus: many good points form all the people in this thread.

[Sylum.1806]

Other than the fact that security IS more important than convenience, I don't see how this move is any different from Republicans moving to repeal the ACA without providing an alternative.

Look, most reasonable comments here seem to agree that we want more security and welcome ArenaNet in implementing stronger security features. But you don't go ahead and remove a feature without a viable replacement. I don't get it. I work in Operations for a small mobile game developer studio and my boss constantly admonishes us to not come up with half-baked solutions. How is this not thought through in a AAA MMO studio escapes me. Furthermore, a statement was only made AFTER the release of the update, AFTER the release of the patch notes, instead of being in the patch notes. I know how much ArenaNet cares about the community but are you aware of how this looks to the community?

I can still continue to use Launch Buddy to multi-box. Sure, the hassle of inputting the email and password is a total drag, but at least I only run two accounts at once. The possibility of those with more accounts changing all their passwords to one single password is very real. Security isn't just about technical knowledge. Some psychology is involved here. Suppose you say "They are taking the risk of making themselves vulnerable with using one password for all accounts." Fair enough, but how is this assumption of risk any different from the assumption of risk using a third party software?

You can't have it both ways. If you cannot dedicate the resources to developing tools that allow users to store multiple account log-in details, allow multi-boxing, you have to leave it to community to do so, and let THEM assume the risk.

Whom do you wish to dump more work on? The customer support or engineers? Because sparing both teams means taking the easy way out and giving the community the feeling that you don't care.

[Mrs Lana.2506]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:As stated here, we have no objections to players using multiple accounts, when that use follows the proscribed limitations. The change today was decidedly not a means of trying to limit or halt multi-boxing, nor was it developed as a means of inconveniencing those who play with multiple accounts. If you are inconvenienced, we're sorry. But security > convenience, as I'm sure you'll appreciate.

Then why not develop - or work with the developer - of a launcher for multiple accounts? By taking away these arguments and providing NO alternative it certainly says something other than "we care about security". Considering it's been around since release this seems like an odd reason to take it away now.

[Rozbuska.5263]

This is the most unwanted and unnecessary changes ever made here. The vast majority of players using it was multi-boxers and almost all of them uses LaunchBuddy what have those credentials heavily encrypted. Now we are not only forced to start accounts in a super uncomfortable fashion but also put our credentials to some notepad file on the desktop or makeshift batch files to make multi-login possible in some reasonable time frame. This attempt of better security basically created The Mother of all security risks.

[Mrs Lana.2506]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Shikigami.4013 said:The inconvenience will be countered by people giving all their accounts the same password so they never have to change it anymore when logging into different accounts.This does not improve security.

IIRC the password system will not allow that. You can't use any password than anyone has ever used before either in GW2 or any of the compromised password databases.

Incorrect. All my alt accounts have the exact same password.

[Mireles Lore.5942]

@Healix.5819 said:

@Mireles Lore.5942 said:So pretty much useless because it has no way to receive credentials? Wonderful.

If that's all you were using for, yes. Currently, the only way to automatically login to character select is by remembering your email/password on the launcher, checking the auto play box (automatically clicks play after 5s) and using the -autologin option (automatically clicks login when the email/password is remembered). This adds roughly 8 seconds to the time it takes to login, compared to using -email -password -nopatchui. To be clear, it's no longer possible to skip the launcher and go directly into character select.

Yeah it plays in 5 seconds, but the launcher still has to load. For many people out there it can take up to a few minutes for the launcher to initialize.

[arukAdo.2047]

Well after fighting for a few hours with my configs right now im launching multibox faster than before the patch, basicly it forced me to use gw2launcher, something i should have done before but it was working fine so ive never really bothered with it.The biggest issue ive run into was the message that i need to use authen method, this message isnt automatic so if you dont have one set, every 2 or 3 startup you would have to manually click on "remind me later" in the launcher, it seems that you can have max 4 accounts per phone number so id suggest using winauth insteadI also had to accept the user aggreement every time, apparently ive never run the game normally since PoF, if the reason for removing the command line was to force us to accept it, well they could have just say it, its fair :pSo after fidling with that and with each account game settings, right now im starting my 5 clients in 15 seconds, the 5 seconds delay for autologin doesnt cumulate, since you have all 5 started almost on top of each others, before patch my different method with batch was taking nearly a minute long.Since most of the people here or pissed by this change arent multiboxing but just using xx accounts one after the other, I really dont see the difference for them with or without the -email/password, gw2launcher can even make you shorcuts so it would be identical, you just have to run one time each individually to set your email and password in the launcher, then its fully automatic, the others tools doing the same thing are probly just fine as wellThe extra features in gw2launcher are also very neat, like with the api key to tell if your done dailies, last time you ran the account, seperate graphics options, window positions ect... ect...

[Mrs Lana.2506]

@Kezika.7692 said:

@Shikigami.4013 said:The inconvenience will be countered by people giving all their accounts the same password so they never have to change it anymore when logging into different accounts.This does not improve security.

You literally can't, their system doesn't allow any account to have the same password as another account has or has ever used. Once a password has been set to a GW2 account it is dead for any other GW2 account forever.

Interesting, considering my alt accounts all have the same password :thonking:

[Vash.2386]

@Crackmonster.2790 said:This is excellent, anything for reducing those who don't play straightforward but try and get more than others. Even if that wasn't the intention.

I don't have much good to say about multiboxers, running multiple accounts so they can get manyfold the rewards of normal honest players, or overcome challenges that weren't meant to just be facerolled by a single player. This is not something that is good, but ofc those who do it will argue to death it's sooo good, because they can get manyfold the rewards.

Essentially just people willing to abuse game mechanics for getting more than the normal honest player.

I mean, really, did you expect me to have any sympathy towards the guys who come here to complain its harder for them to just load up all their accounts so they can grind their home instance for mega rewards?

They are directly leeching off everyone, reducing values of things for everyone normal. It's just the same as a societal leecher who doesn't do kitten but takes all the benefits from taxes. Everyone else ends up paying for it, except here it's not because of good reasons that everyone should pay.

Wow this just reeks of pure jealousy. Are you aware that many players who have multiple accounts have also spent real dollars to buy extra copies of the game, buy expansions, maybe even buy gems and account upgrades like inventory/bank/shared inventory/harvesting tools and character slots, etc. Why do they not deserve to also get the benefits from these accounts?

[Ayakaru.6583]

How exactly will this affect GW2Buddy?Can it still launch duplicate operations?

[Healix.5819]

@"Miss Lana.5276" said:Then why not develop - or work with the developer - of a launcher for multiple accounts? By taking away these arguments and providing NO alternative it certainly says something other than "we care about security". Considering it's been around since release this seems like an odd reason to take it away now.

The alternatives already exist. If you were using LaunchBuddy, there's Gw2Launcher. If you were simply using a shortcut to launch 1 account at a time, you only need to change to using a batch file like this:

 

 

if not exist "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.%1.dat" (copy "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat" "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.%1.dat")if exist "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat" (del "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat")mklink /H "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat" "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.%1.dat"start Gw2-64.exe %*

Save the above in notepad as Gw2-64.bat and place it in your folder along side Gw2-64.exe. Change your shortcuts from:

Gw2-64.exe -email example -password example -nopatchui ...

To:

Gw2-64.bat # ...

Change # to whatever you want - it'll be used to name that account's file, so make it 1 for your first account, or it could be your email or display name. To make the shortcut look right, select to change its icon to Gw2-64.exe, and select to have it run minimized to hide the command window. Rather than edit all of your shortcuts, copy/paste this one and change the # for each account.

If you want it to automatically login to character select, add the -autologin option to the shortcut and select auto-play on the launcher, though it's on a 5s delay to start the game. Note that it's no longer possible to skip the launcher entirely and go directly into character select.

Note that this example requires an NTFS file system on Windows 7 and up and assuming Gw2-64. If you're using Gw2, replace all instance of Gw2-64 with Gw2.

 

The only thing ArenaNet really needs to do is support "-nopatchui -autologin", but I'm guessing they won't do that because they want you to see the launcher. It would also be nice if they could store the email/password somewhere other than Local.dat to avoid having to patch it.

@"arukAdo.2047" said:The biggest issue ive run into was the message that i need to use authen method, this message isnt automatic so if you dont have one set, every 2 or 3 startup you would have to manually click on "remind me later" in the launcher, it seems that you can have max 4 accounts per phone number so id suggest using winauth instead

The SMS reminder will stop showing after the next patch, and won't be displayed again unless you launch the account normally (assuming that wasn't also changed with this patch). Gw2Launcher also has built-in support for an authenticator, which will also automatically enter the code for you.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:How exactly will this affect GW2Buddy?

It can still open multiple clients, but you need to manually enter your email/password to login, since it relied on the now removed method to login. They could easily update it to the Local.dat method, but it sounds like they're going to quit.

[thrag.9740]

Funny how Anet didn't feel the need to warn players about these coming changes while the game was on sale over the past couple months. They were happy to take your money.

[Mireles Lore.5942]

@Healix.5819 said:The SMS reminder will stop showing after the next patch, and won't be displayed again unless you launch the account normally (assuming that wasn't also changed with this patch).

Would you mind linking where this was said? It is still showing up for me.

Side note. Yeah, its possible to come close to restoring what has been lost. Players shouldn't be left to write batch strings to juggle files to fill a void of a previously existing feature thats considered essential to many people. That is just bad support to remove it with no warning and leaving your community to figure it out. They really need to support a solution for this.

[Mrs Lana.2506]

@Healix.5819 said:

@"Miss Lana.5276" said:Then why not develop - or work with the developer - of a launcher for multiple accounts? By taking away these arguments and providing NO alternative it certainly says something other than "we care about security". Considering it's been around since release this seems like an odd reason to take it away now.

The alternatives already exist. If you were using LaunchBuddy, there's Gw2Launcher. If you were simply using a shortcut to launch 1 account at a time, you only need to change to using a batch file like this:

 

 

if not exist "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.%1.dat" (copy "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat" "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.%1.dat")if exist "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat" (del "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat")mklink /H "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat" "%appdata%\Guild Wars 2\Local.%1.dat"start Gw2-64.exe %*

Save the above in notepad as Gw2-64.bat and place it in your folder along side Gw2-64.exe. Change your shortcuts from:

Gw2-64.exe -email example -password example -nopatchui ...

To:

Gw2-64.bat # ...

Change # to whatever you want - it'll be used to name that account's file, so make it 1 for your first account, or it could be your email or display name. To make the shortcut look right, select to change its icon to Gw2-64.exe, and select to have it run minimized to hide the command window. Rather than edit all of your shortcuts, copy/paste this one and change the # for each account.

If you want it to automatically login to character select, add the -autologin option to the shortcut and select auto-play on the launcher, though it's on a 5s delay to start the game. Note that it's no longer possible to skip the launcher entirely and go directly into character select.

Note that this example requires an NTFS file system on Windows 7 and up and assuming Gw2-64. If you're using Gw2, replace all instance of Gw2-64 with Gw2.

 

The only thing ArenaNet really needs to do is support "-nopatchui -autologin", but I'm guessing they won't do that because they want you to see the launcher. It would also be nice if they could store the email/password somewhere other than Local.dat to avoid having to patch it.

I was using Launchbuddy, and a guildie had recommended gw2launcher to me, but I can't get that one to work for me either, autologin or no.

[Rose Solane.1027]

Scrap my original comment. ArenaNet could have invested some time in changing the launcher so it would allow saving multiple accounts and passwords. They didn't. Luckily there are solutions for this inconvenience ArenaNet created, see the post below from Healix :)

[Healix.5819]

@Mireles Lore.5942 said:Would you mind linking where this was said? It is still showing up for me.

The SMS reminder not showing? I'm the source - I found that out years ago. If you exclusively play the game with -sharearchive and only update the game with -image (the default functionality of Gw2Launcher), the SMS reminder will stop showing after the next patch. I haven't seen that message in years, until I launch the game without -sharearchive, then it's back until the next patch. I just changed my Local.dat file this patch and have seen the message, so I can only confirm if this functionality is still true with the next patch.

@Miss Lana.5276 said:I was using Launchbuddy, and a guildie had recommended gw2launcher to me, but I can't get that one to work for me either, autologin or no.

Gw2Launcher/wiki/Getting-Started

[Holy Security.9724]

I would it put simply like that: If you want to use it, inform yourself about the risks. Storing sensitive data? Yah, might not be perfectly secure. Is it worth the convenience though? Yes.It is somewhat the equivalent of somebody booking a flight to a region which might be a warzone and then complaining "ohh, why is there a war?"

[Holy Security.9724]

@Crackmonster.2790 said:This is excellent, anything for reducing those who don't play straightforward but try and get more than others. Even if that wasn't the intention.

I don't have much good to say about multiboxers, running multiple accounts so they can get manyfold the rewards of normal honest players, or overcome challenges that weren't meant to just be facerolled by a single player. This is not something that is good, but ofc those who do it will argue to death it's sooo good, because they can get manyfold the rewards.

Essentially just people willing to abuse game mechanics for getting more than the normal honest player.

I mean, really, did you expect me to have any sympathy towards the guys who come here to complain its harder for them to just load up all their accounts so they can grind their home instance for mega rewards?

They are directly leeching off everyone, reducing values of things for everyone normal. It's just the same as a societal leecher who doesn't do kitten but takes all the benefits from taxes. Everyone else ends up paying for it, except here it's not because of good reasons that everyone should pay.

What puts you off doing the same? Your morality? Welcome to the real world, my friend, where morality is so small it barely even exists. Multiboxing is allowed and still easily doable with self written stuff. Nothing has changed, nothing will change. Unless they completely forbid multiboxing and IP track this. But this will be the nail in the coffin for gw2 all together

[zealex.9410]

@Yasi.9065 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Yasi.9065 said:So Anet is gonna refund my 20ish accounts now? Or buy me 20ish computers? What a horrible change. Anet. O M F G L O L.

You can still multibox from the same machine. You have to manually disable the relevant Mutex (although I'm sure people have already written scripts to do that). The main problem is typing in the credentials.

Yes. I know. But guess what... the credentials are kinda the problem. Not the mutex.

This just exposes how bad and outdated gw2 launcher really is. No multi-account support. No character select. Cheap.

I agree that this is a bad change but which other game has a better multi-acount support?

[Tshakaar.6429]

Unhappy? Totally upset to once again seeing my convenience killed because in 2019 people can still be dumb about passwords.

[Carighan.6758]

That being said, now that autologin is no longer a thing, can we have the old login screen back? :heart: Pwetty pwease? :heart:

For those who don't know it, this was the old screen:

Importantly, it had a chroma hash for your password, a really neat thing to double-check whether you typed it correctly before hitting enter.

[arukAdo.2047]

@"Healix.5819" said: Gw2Launcher also has built-in support for an authenticator, which will also automatically enter the code for you.Yes ive figured this AFTER so i couldnt "use" that feature yet but since ive filled everything up and im hoping ill never have to worry again about it :p

Is theres any hope you could add an option per account to have the window always on top? im using a shamefull autohotkey script trought the launcher for that, its working but it would so much more awesome directly into the launcher of courseThat bring my next question, do you know if its possible to unallow resizing of a windows? like disable the resize mousehover? Im sorry if its a dumb question, maybe its possible to do that with autohotkey already im just not very knowledgeable on thisThe reason been if you accidentally left click on resize, like say in between the windows, it will move the windows if they have a negative position set, so as long im not left clicking on the edges, and have the top windows "always on top", well i dont see the windows caption anymore from top or bottow windows, that save a few lines for display and make it a sort of borderless experience, well its perfect in my case (as long i dont accidentally resize the top) because i divide the screen in 4 windows, im use to right click to swap windows so its not happening very often, yet it would be very welcome

[AdamKeenanFive.7619]

So is auto login coming back as it is sorely missed also is anyone else having trouble logging in the traditional way as of the launch of the new patch

[schokelmei.8271]

This is Arenanets way of saying "Our users are stupid, we have to protect them". And yes, we are stupid, we failed for the Bubbletea Scam.