CCP has made a great many changes specially against multi-boxing. Marauders got a HUGE defensive nerf specially because they were being multi-boxed. It was stated that way in the patch notes.
Mining was meant to be a team sport. It was advertised as a fleet activity. One of their earlier advertises described it as mining ships doing their thing while a freighter runs back and forth with combat ships standing by for defense. None of that was advertised as multi-boxing.
As for solo mining, that’s doable also. There is nothing stopping anyone from mining solo to the maximum capacity of his or her mining ship. The only exception is the new prismatacite.
But then, you can easily anchor that new phase structure with a single Rorqual and then you can use drones. See? Solo mining. Skilling up to the Rorqual is not difficult. Even I can fly and fit it. I have no plans to ever get one, but I did skill up to it.
It’s not really broken, and you’re not being punished. You’re just doing something that doesn’t make very much sense and then complaining that the senseless activity that you’re engaging in isn’t very effective or convenient.
Why should a game activity practically require the player to be multiboxing for it to be a worthwhile activity?
If CCP were to make a good design ore mining could be worthwhile for both multiboxing and for solo miners. By making some types of ores less convenient to mine in large fleets, for example by making the rocks small, spread far apart and/or rare it becomes more valuable. This allows players who have smaller setups to benefit from mining such rocks, while the multiboxers won’t bother with a rock that takes more setup time than the time they can mine on it.
It’s not. Mining is designed to be run in a group for maximum payout. The game simply doesn’t differentiate between someone with friends and someone playing all the accounts in the fleet, nor should it.
By making hidden ore sites that players must scan in LS & NS, with smaller ores but spread out, a Prospect can indeed solo mine it effectively, but it’s not efficient for a multi-boxer fleet of exhumers (who already have nice moons & other anomalies, and the new prismaticite).
They already have it with the new hidden anoms, just remove the NPC spawns so ventures, pioneer & expedition frigs can solo it, perfect.
I agree that it shouldn’t differentiate between those two cases. If someone manages to fly that many accounts all by themselves they’re fine to do so.
What I do think is that CCP could put in more effort to ensure that some content is not as easily multiboxed by that many accounts.
Just make the gameplay more interactive.
I know miners have been pushing to make mining more and more convenient (in other words: less and less interactive) and CCP has listened, but I’d love to see at least some form of ore mining to require a bit more interaction so that the value of those activities becomes worth doing for someone who isn’t a 10-man mining fleet all by themselves.
So, I ask no differentiation, just more interactive gameplay.
The Omber and Kernite sites are pretty easy to multibox. I assume all anomalies would be as well. The “warp to member” is a very powerful fleet tool. Not worth it though. The amount you get is pretty tiny. Basically I simply did it to put that pretty ore in my collection.
Omber & Kernite are too low income for a solo Omega miner.
We have to get to the higher grade Gneiss, Dark Ochre & Ytirium for it to be worthwhile. The new hidden ore anoms in LS & NS has these. I can bring a prospect with mobile depot and scan down the sites at a safe, then re-equip for mining + covert cloak, while in hostile territory.
Like what I do with relic/data sites in hostile space, which earns even higher income, but I also want to mine & gas huff, for gameplay variety. Ofc, some of these sites are easy for multiboxers, but they also get a better option with the new Prismaticite in rifts with far more m3 so their fleet of exhumers can stay on grid for a bit.
Gas price varies by color. I get tired of seeing Azure ( the most common ), but the real ‘trick’ is not to get all sweaty, hammering D-scan, and fretting about getting exploded. I find me a system off the rails, dead end lowsec works best for this. No one will enter a dead end system without purpose. I also like the big empty. D-scan has a max range of 14.3 au, if your miner can park over that distance from any gate, you are virtually unseen. If the gas is expensive lime, I hang out and dump my load into a nearby station every 10 to 15 minutes 12 to 15 M ISK. That is based on 120k x 500 = 60 M per full load. Later I will fetch it to market in a Miasmos. They can haul 8 to 9 times the amount.
If it is cheap gas, then I set a cell phone alarm for 45 or 50 mins. I can afford to lose the ship, sometimes they won’t bother with the ore and I can actually recover the load. It helps to make a station in the system your respawn point with multiple ventures inside it. During the wait time, I can take in an episode on my streaming service, come here and post this BS, or call my sister and bother her. I find it is a lot like baking, you just don’t want to burn the cake.
No matter what CCP attempts to do, mining is grind, and grind is always boring. It is the same in all the games and not just here. In Black Desert I can make billions of silver baking the same dish day after day, it is a grind that is only stopped when I run out of ingredients. Then I can either buy more ingredients at market, or go grind them in the garden or hunt for them in the woods. Billions of silver there translates into more stuff I can place in my virtual doll houses.
Or harvest gas in low sec, no NPC spawns you can get 80m and hour in a prospect. Better than any mining in a nimble and relatively safe setup. Mining is just stupid for solo pve when other more lucrative activities exists. CCP refuses to make solo mining viable to force multi boxing.
Fyi, solo mining in a barge in LS is asking to be ganked. And forget about barge in NS unless you are in the alliance space. The only option for solo players to mine these lucrative places is prospect ninja.. which is shutdown by NPC spawns, thanks CCP.
Technically. But mining as a pve activity should be profitable for a solo non-multiboxer like other pve activities, particularly in low & nullsec. It just broadens the horizon, more options for players.
Right now there’s an abundance of pve content that earns more isk than solo mining, it shouldn’t be punished further with pointless rats spawning in scanned ore anoms that only hurt the solo miner. It’s a small change. We’re not asking for much.