I mean multiaccounting…multiboxing is the sheer possibility to have more than one account possible on one system…this is against fc’s own eula in a way and yes in my opinion there should be only ONE account running per computer…no additional alphas(not possible without breaking the eula) or omegas(made possible by fc years ago,still an eula break by fc if you take it seriously)…as stated in the eula…fc is breaking its own eula for years now…and not calling this a problem because it’s coming from them but hunting every person with the full might of the banhammer that uses the slightest edploit is extremely stupid in my eyes…classical double standards…
In a way? So, this is nothing more than your opinion then. Thanks for clearing that up.
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ET is a reroll from 2006, original accounts from 2003. And I know for a fact that multi-account play for me started in the 2006-2007 range. It was never an issue or a grey area. I know I had multiple email addresses at one point in time, as you needed each account to have its own address for some reason.
Ive mined ice in the old days with up to 15 accounts. Miners, Orca, Freighter and Boost characters all mining along nicely. Ive had multiple accounts creating a R&D and manufacturing empire as well. Trust me it was a thing long before you think it likely was. I did this mostly because it was there to do and try with economies of scale. I was smart and created systems to allow me to grow my characters SP and power to do everything and anything in game and I truly enjoyed the challenges of growing and building an empire.
FC/CCP nerfs things to no end when they feel its a horrible game play mechanic but they also need to cater to those who find challenges inherent in the gaming world we call Eve by allowing certain things, fits, gameplay avenues for people. Atm they are creating gameplay for multiboxers with Homefronts and other content and Im sure one day they will clamp down on it, they have on everything else, when it endangers the game we play.
The loud “majority”?.. no “minority” on these forums, will scream at the next flavor of the month that needs to be cancelled. This is the next hill because its an obvious target for the “thats unfair!!” crowd.
Ill play Eve and enjoy what I have created and adapt and change to whatever FC now wants but multiboxing should remain as a viable way to play.
Yup, you betcha, it’s hard to box more and more accounts without tools to enable it, and that is all FC needs to monitor is usage of tools to enhance this type of gameplay. There are hard physical limits that computer hardware and human input create. It is here that I believe FC needs to focus on limiting gameplay naturally.
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When FC starts cracking down on the illicit Chinese “gold farming”, well… Until then, they’ll keep continuing to allow anything and everything until they’re forced to acknowledge and deal with it.
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with the term ‘in a way’ is meant that ccp(fenris) is ignoring it but tries to ‘explain’ it with ‘the players want it’ instead of changingt it…a very dubiose way to work with ones own EULA…and every critic regarding this praxis is valid on its own…if you have a different opinion…well…let me ask one question : Why do we even have an EULA if not even the producers of this game care about it if it becomes ‘neccessary’?
All EULA’s are like that.
Would only limit the fleetsize to about 5-6-7ish. In the beginning, when computers weren’t powerful enough, i played concurrently with 2 desktops, 3 laptops and 5 mice.
Back then in our corp there was a serious discussion if buying special mice for your feet could be a good thing for handling your fleet better.
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Yeah and you can probably count the people who are so nerdy to do that on a regular basis on two hands for the whole EVE population. Plus the efficiency of such a setup would be pretty bad, at least in combat. Maybe viable for some basic mining or some drone-assist farming, but nothing more.
If we could achive that, would a very big improvement.
I used 2 PC’s with 3 screens to run 3 combat toons at once. Worked fine for me.
Since we’re counting our accounts – I didn’t even have a second account till 8 months ago. Didn’t see the point. I still don’t, for most things.
And? In the overwhelming majority of all suggestions regarding a limitation of mass-multiboxing 3-char-setups are widely accepted.
And, despite it “worked fine for you”, you still lose a lot of combat performance this way. Except if you are awfully bad anyway. But high-skilled combat simply isn’t possible by constantly switching between physical machines, it’s hard even to do on multiple seamless screens with a single input control.
So, the most thing you can do without losing a lot of combat effectivity is to dualbox rather easy to fly DPS ships on the main PC and an anchored commandbooster-toon with maybe some assisted drones or a passive scout on the second one. And thats something pretty much no one complains about.
Speak for yourself please. While difficult, far more effective than just being solo. 
Edit; A long time ago, someone said it wasn’t possible. Good thing I was already doing it or I might have believed them.
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I don’t need to, the facts speak for themselves…it’s too easy…
5k Players with 5 accounts each is NOT the same as 25k players in the past…
In fact it’s an 80% decline in player numbers…
We don’t have any current numbers from FC, so anything is best guess, unfortunately.
I’m reposting this as I believe it’s the most current numbers CCP released (FanFest 2022). The average EVE players has 2.6 accounts and 4.3 characters. If we assume every EVE player logs in ALL their accounts every session, you’d get somewhere between 12,000-14,000 actual players at any given time (this varies, of course).
Maybe you misunderstood what I was trying to say:
This “using multiple PCs” thing isn’t a large scale problem, because it doesn’t scale well.
You get hugely diminishing returns per additional char, thats totally inevitable. Of course if you bring 2 Damagedealers you will do more damage than bringing just one. But not 2x as much, maybe 1.8x as much because of the splitted attention you perform with 90% of your maximum capabilities on each account. And if you use 3 accs on different physical machines, that will probably drop down to 210% total… and after 3 you won’t see any total improvement any more, you can’t manage your own 20 ship PvP fleet by using 8 PCs and 4 Laptops with 12 Monitors. It simply doesn’t mechanically work out.
Basically no one has a problem with using ~3 chars to support yourself. Only the most excessive usecases that are viable today via mass-multiboxing on a single PC and using convenience-mechanics like fleetwarps, regroups and drone-assists should be nerfed (either directly or via re-designing of content) to a value that the “optimum” for bringing multiple chars on-grid caps out around 3.
Can you expand on your thoughts on fleet warps and regroups? I wholeheartedly agree with drone assist - it should be removed entirely.
Well, before fleetwarps and regroups every pilot was self responsible for his maneuvering on grid. Which meant it was possible to pick off stragglers, people could miswarp, warp too slow and be caught, emergency warps left people behind who didn’t properly listen etc. etc.
All that offered potential for turning battles if your side had the better pilots who did less mistakes. It offered chances to fight even a bit outnumbered or outgunned if your fleet had a better communicating FC. So basically less “automated remote commands” means more impact for personal skill on the battlefield. It rewards organization, attention and discipline.
It also forced decisions on the opposing FC: Do you let the tackled guys die? Are they vital for your fleet setup so you need to warp back to save them? Is it worth saving them but slowing down your fleet travel for it?
As a side effect, removing these things also would add inconvenience the more accounts you want to control, because now you’d had to manually warp each of your ship, make sure to manually anchor or orbit all of them. It limits convenient massmultiboxing all by itself, because imagine doing that for each warp with 15 or 20 ships.
Drone-Assist is self-explaining. No one should be able to give any remote-commands to other ships. Its simply bad for gameplay. Drone Assist should be removed, but replaced with other benefits for drone-based ship setups, like a (slow) auto-repair while in the bay or more advanced sets of orders that can be given to drones (like guarding an area or an object).
My main line of thought is that in a competitive game like EVE there should be absolutely no way to remote-command another players ship. Be it warping, moving on grid or attacking someone. As a game design principle.
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Was there a time before fleetwarps? I know regroups was added a while ago. At least since 2008, I always thought fleetwarps were always a thing.
These numbers are pretty much useless without context. Did they state how they measured these?
How many of them are Omegas, how many of them are Alphas?
How many of them are totally inactive?
What is the median amount in comparison?
What are the extremes?
How large is the actual EVE population that plays with 1-2 accounts on a regular basis and how much percentage is made of cracknerds with more than 10 accounts?
How many of them are just SP-farms or Seeds or Industry slaves that never really contribute anything to actual gameplay because they never really undock and do anything meaningful in space?
So many questions before we could have an objective and somewhat adequate picture of the situation.
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