This thread was originated by a player who has only 55 days in the game and couldn’t possibly have an opinion about anything related to EVE.
Please ignore.
@ISD_Traindriver Please, delete this thead.
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If you have understand this part, what do you believe would any discussion achieve? The Devs won’t cut their own income source, no matter how much the gamers dislike it. At least not as long as it cannot be proven that disallowing multiboxing would encourage so many “solo-accounters” to sub by being a more attractive game, that it would outweight the loss of all those multiboxers. And I feel, that simply cannot be proven, even if it would be true (what I sincerily don’t know).
The other thing to consider is, that many content simpy wouldn’t happen if people couldn’t at least dual- or triplebox at all. Because in EVE many fights only happen if you know where to be at what exact moment to engage someone you can beat. But if that “scouting” has to be done on non-alts, thats like 3 people in CovOps that will be missing the fight. Who likes to spend 4 hours of their evening just “scouting” for content and then being unable to be part of the crashing party? Next thing is that you would be 100% reliant on other people even for small jobs. Like hauling something valuable, moving stuff from A to B, bringing stuff into your WH or out of it. If nobody is online, you can’t do ****. Or risk jumping into a sudden camp or roaming gang that just wasn’t there 10 minutes ago, and die without the slightest chance. You would waste hours to bring you new stuff from a Tradehub to your PvP base, instead of letting an Alt bring it semi-afk in his hauler while you are looking for or even generating content with your main. I am also pretty convinced that large parts of the main resources of the game (Ore, Ice at least) are mined by mass-multiboxers. The prices could possible go completely nuts if you force people to mine with only 1 ship. This would be of course nice for those mining with only one ship as they would get a lot more for their mined stuff. But everyone else has to pay the higher production costs.
this leads me to this conclusion:
- a “one account - one pilot” solution would make EVE more frustrating, generate less content for everyone and make things incredibly hard especially for new guys and small groups
- I cannot see how entirely diabling multiboxing makes EVE a better experience for anyone
To be honest, my personal solution would be: Allow only one EVE Client per PC, but enable the usage of all 3 Chars on your account simultaneously. That would achieve the following: People can’t run 10, 15, 20+ Ships any more on one machine, but everyone can at least run 3 ships at once to make logistic or small tasks easier. Its fairer, it still allows to support “yourself” in smaller tasks or use one ship for time-consuming and pretty boring tasks that no real person would enjoy. However, the problem stays: It would at least at first create a large income cut for CCP and the chances that they would ever consider it are pretty much null.
Last but not least: Players even currently have a chance to actively do something against it: Form an Alliance that only allows dual or tripleboxing at most and go hunt mass-multiboxers of all kind. The Icebelts are full all over New Eden. Gank them daily. Outrun the Incursionrunners. Seed the Wormholes of Massboxers and gank them on their next farming run. If really so many players are against it at heart, you’ll find enough followers to pull it off.
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I look at this with an optimistic approach while thinking that one pilot can play the same as any other different pilot and the only difference is time spent doing such.
A Capsuleer with one log in pilot could be in a fleet with other Capsuleers all using a single pilot require additional time to fleet up and be organised.
Waiting for someone to be ready adds time and this could negatively effect of fleeting with others without first establishing strong commitment to the goal.
A Capsuleer who has their own objectives can afford to have idle pilots waiting so their overall experience is greater than just completing with generating New Eden Wealth.
I both like and dislike multiboxing in EVE.
I like that people are allowed to multibox in EVE and that it is an accepted form of play that the developers can take into account when designing mechanics:
- Legal multiboxing is better than illegal multiboxing. Some other games prohibit multiboxing but that doesn’t mean people won’t do it, it just means cheaters have an advantage over people who want to play the game according to the rules.
- Easy cooperation for simple boring tasks. While I could ask a friend or corporation member to light a cyno to move my jump-capable ship and sit in space doing nothing for 10 minutes each time they help me, I like that I don’t have to waste someone else’s time for every jump. While I could ask someone else to scout ahead, multiboxing allows me to do it myself. Still, people do scout for each other from time to time so it’s not like multiboxing removes cooperation for everything, it just adds flexibility.
On the other hand, I also dislike multiboxing, because:
- Multiboxing impacts economic value of easily-multiboxed activities. Mining? Unless you bring your own mining fleet to mine that ore you’re better off doing any other task because mining regular ore doesn’t pay at all due to the large supplies from multiboxers. Gas huffing luckily isn’t multiboxed nearly as much, which means it’s still valuable in a solo ship, but if multiboxing didn’t exist, ore mining in a single barge would be significantly more profitable than it is today.
I do not think EVE could ever go without multiboxing. The game mechanics and payment structure have been designed with multiboxing in mind and even if multiboxing was outlawed from today people would still do it.
What I do think CCP should do about multiboxing is one simple thing:
Design the game in such a way that activities are not easily scalable
- Exploration? - Requires a lot of action from the pilot, not easily scalable. Great!
- Gas huffing? - Harder to find new gas clouds than to huff it, which makes it much less scalable than ore. Great!
- Ore mining? - Very low player input, easily scalable. Bad design.
- Ore mining after in space compression changes? - Even easier to scale with even less player input. A step in the wrong direction, if you ask me.
- Planetary industry? - Easily scalable. Too easy, I think a rework of PI to make it more interactive would be good for the game
- Planetary industry (if it had some of the changes that some people ask for like sharable templates and automated restart of pipelines)? - “please let me easily produce PI on my 100 accounts CCP!” or in other words, a leap in the wrong direction.
- Ratting anomalies? - not much input needed if your drones can automatically fight. Easily scalable and could use a rework.
- Abyssals? - Require a lot of manual piloting and attention. Hard to scale to multiple accounts past maybe 3, great design in this context!
CCP should not stop the act of multiboxing, but what they can do is make it less easy to multibox the game.
More interaction, less AFK gameplay.
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Re; More Interaction….
Well did you take on the other possibility that some Capsuleers perhaps just want to play their sandbox SOLO? Even if that means multiboxing many versions of themselves?
The main point the OP makes is a goalposting issue imo. That they can scale or gain resources faster, more efficiently, etc. Yet reducing multiboxing just moves this goalpost to something else, ultimately to “level” the playing field youd need everyone the same, even intelligence or effort or time investment availability.
Youll always have inequality in some ways and things even if its only at a human level and what we have all been gifted by life itself. Taking from the games developmental income pool in order to do so is a moot point for me.
That being said I have often stated in conversations with other players that CCPs game designs have both created its niche place in the gaming community and also shot itself in the foot in order to grow larger in the mainstream viewpoint.
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That is all just the sort of pure nonsense I’d expect from someone who, by the look of it, has only been in Eve 55 days.
Firstly there’s the matter of having more than one Omega account. Not everyone who has multiple Omega accounts necessarily multiboxes…though they can do. Many simply want multiple accounts, living different Eve lives.
Personally I both live separate Eve lives with my multiple Omegas and I multibox sometimes too. But the notion that multiboxing has ever given me any huge advantage is just nonsense. In fact multiboxing in a fleet is a pain in terms of keeping up with FC, and I’m quite sure there’s battles where I’d have got more kills concentrating on flying just one ship. Bear in mind also that if I am multiboxing two ships then I just as much stand to lose two ships, but I don’t necessarily always have double the kill power !
The main benefit to multiboxing for me is scouting, where I can use an alt to give real time info on a system. Useful for avoiding gate camps. The advantage is not huge. I mean, you can do the same without multiboxing…it just takes longer and thus is not as ‘real time’.
Most multiboxers are multiboxing a handful of accounts…two or three. The tales you hear of people multiboxing 20 chars at the same time are really few and far between. But I suspect that is what you are responding to, as if vast swathes of people were at it. They aren’t.
And the idea that noobs leave because of multiboxing is pure speculative nonsense. When I was a noob and I saw someone fielding a fleet of 4 Orcas my reaction was not ’ that’s not fair…I feel so intimidated’…it was ’ great !..I can’t wait to be doing that too ! ’
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I don’t see it as nonsense, just their point of view.
They’ve been in the game 55 days…don’t have any killboard at all…and are somehow an expert on multiboxing despite never having done any. Yup…that’s Eve forums for you.
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Still an openly shared opinion for debate. It is then up to others to choose how to interpret their position of multiboxing
I did interpret their position. It’s grade A nonsense. Too much nonsense is the real reason people leave Eve.
To you it can be and it also can be seen in another light.
There is a few points inside the opening thread that hits home on why it had been described to us the way it was, yet still not nonsense by a long shot.
If you shoot yourself in the foot, ‘balance’ will definitely elude you!
I think CCP makes a pretty good job of it, overall. Considering the challenges presented by trying to keep engaged a comparatively small but very diverse set of players, it would be quite easy to make a game-breaking innovation which might lead to disaster. Checks and balances, checks and balances.
I am not against multi-boxing as a gameplay feature - in some instances EVE makes it almost mandatory - but I dislike greed and botting. These are, of course, personal observations: they are hardly objective!
Some folks just can’t afford to have more than one or two accounts - I’ve been in that position myself - but that doesn’t shut them out from the game (or, at least, it needn’t do so). I think that’s fine. Surely, no one is entitled to play a video game? (That’s not a direct response to you, Eternus8lux8lucis).
Multi-boxing is with us and, since it does indeed benefit CCP’s income, it is unlikely to disappear from the game.
If those players who are so vocal about the evils of the practice were to, you know, get together and do something about it (without multi-boxing, of course), it would perhaps herald a new era of emergent gameplay, which Highsec certainly badly needs.
A good thought-provoking post, Eternus8lux8lucis.
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Ah…sorry…hadn’t realised you don’t live in a universe where things are either true or not true. My commiserations.
We.both / all including the OP share the same sandbox and inside that same box can have different meanings depending on how much sand we are wanting to shift to find the truth.
The part of the same sandbox is just seen differently.
/The question on what is nonsense and what isn’t regarding multiboxing is still open for debate.
OK…well let me know what viewing angle makes 2 + 2 = 5 as generally the response to statements that are simply not true is ’ that is simply not true’…not ’ hang on while I shift an entire universe worth of sand and make a black hole large enough to bend the truth '.
Googling is not my strongest tool though it came back with this;
Does it check out? Still not nonsense!
//Let”s address the reasons for each point and apply the OP’s points as elements.
///In game Revenue generator? True or False?
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Oh look, another thread about multiboxing.
No different to the numerous other threads on the subject.
If you don’t like it, don’t do it.
If you’re going to play EVE long term, you’ll simply have to accept that it’s a part of the game, and has been since day one.
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NOT multiboxing would lead to a sense of hopelessness. If you remove multiboxing, you would have to delegate all the activities that people currently do with multiple characters of their own to other people. You would need dedicated cyno characters that are always available to light cynos in remote places far away from where they live, available on call when logistics need cynos. You would need logistics people that do nothing but logistics and be ready to do that and drop whatever else they do when it’s needed. You would need scouts that scout other people around when they need to be scouted, not when you want to. You would need dedicated ratting chars that go on expeditions with other characters if they need more than one char for a combat plex or things like that. You would need dedicated industry characters that produce stuff and work like a real company with bosses and schedules and 8 hour shifts. The list goes on and on
Without multiboxing, EVE would actually become a real job and not just a second side gig that you can do at leisure. Without multiboxing, you would throw EVE away in a heartbeat the moment you tip your toes outside the activities that you can do on our own just fine.
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Multiboxing also helps ensure the game is not pay to win.
You can pay for lots of accounts, but there is a diminishing margin of return, and ultimately skill and the ability to use those accounts is far more important.
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