I frequently hear people assert that multiboxers must be botting or input broadcasting. This concerns me because I believe that misconceptions such as this can damage player morale. After all, no one wants to play with a cheater. The truth of the matter, however, is that multiboxing a lot of accounts may require a good setup and good execution, but it is humanly possible to do. So, no, you can’t assume that the guy that ganked you is cheating. In fact, it’s probably safe to assume that he’s not, because he’s probably been reported a billion times by victims. Anyway, here’s a breakdown of how to multibox.
Multiboxing Strats
Find a display solution, such as Olmeca Gold’s client stacking method, EveO-Preview, Kuroro Lucifer’s Autohotkey script to tile fixed window clients on a 4k monitor. I personally prefer using the AHK script to tile 9 720p clients (and run a 10th on a second 1080p monitor). I can always see everything on every client, and don’t have to make any additional clicks. The downside is that I’m limited by screen real estate, so I’ll need another option to grow from here.
Set up your client layout, overview, and hud layou in a way that allows you to quickly and easily see what you need to see and do what you need to do. Shortening the average travel time of your mouse by one tenth of a second might seem like an inconsequential change, but it can really add up when you’re making like 10k mouse movements an hour.
Set up you alarms in a way that will alert you to agro without causing alarm fatigue. For example, I have my armor alarms for my PvE’ers set to 85%. This gives me time to get logi on them if their shields have already been stripped (which means no shield alarm), but it’s low enough that I won’t constantly be hearing the alarm as their armor oscillates back and forth due to incoming damage and rep cycles completing. This is important because I found that constantly hearing the alarm was causing me to start tuning it out. Oh, and make sure that you can hear your alarms over youtube or whatnot.
Learn your hotkeys. Most players only need to learn 13, and it will dramatically improve execution.
Active boxes are clients that require a lot of attention and clicks to use effectively. Passive boxes require very little attention and input (i.e. drone boats that assign their drones to an active box). Every active box you add will dramatically increase your workload. While passive boxes mostly just require a few inputs when you land (some passive boxes, such as logi ships, might require a little extra attention and input, but it’s still nothing when compared to what active boxes require). Thus, most people will typically use 1-4 active boxes, and then use passive boxes to make up the rest of their fleet. Do note that the catalysts in the linked video are effectively passive boxes. He does need to heat and activate his sebos, and pre-heat and pre-active his turrets and scrams before landing on grid, but that’s pretty quick. And then, once he lands on grid, he Q-clicks on his target in order to approach, lock, and activate mods on his target all at the same time. And then that’s pretty much it for those clients. He can try going for the pod, but other than that, they require no further attention. Oh, and I didn’t know about Q click automatically locking targets, so I’m certainly glad I found this.
Pro-Tip: Train new multiboxers up to about 6.5mil SP for free by using recruitment links to create new accounts. Do not redeem any of the free SP gifts until after you have passively trained the character up to 5mil SP. If you do a good remap, use +3 learning implants, and stay on point with updating your skill queue, you’ll be able to hit the SP cap before any of the free SP gifts start expiring. And even if you lose a few of the early gifts, you don’t have to worry about the 1mil SP recruitment bonus from expiring. Oh, and of course, making use of things like cerebral accelerators (i.e. the “Standard Cerebral Accelerator” that can be found in contracts, or any of the event accelerators) and killing sprees can make things go even faster.
The 13 Ways Every Player Should Finger Their Keyboard
Stop Ship: Ctrl + Space
Lock Target: Ctrl + Left Click
Unlock Target: Ctrl + Shift + Left Click
Activate Top Row Module: F1-F8 (note that you can put mid and lowslot active mods into the top row of your hud)
Overheat Module: Shift + Left Click
Align: Q
Orbit: W
Keep at Range: E
Dock/Jump/Activate Gate: D
Launch Drones: T (My Custom Keybind)
Engage Drones: F
Recall Drones: Ctrl + T (My Custom Keybind -makes it really easy to reload and recall drones)
Reload: Ctrl + R
Should you multibox? Some say it’s bad for the game. Some say it’s bad for the player. What do you think?
TLDR: It's a Mixed Bag
+It’s challenging and Fun +Improves Isk Efficiency +Can be more Self-Sufficient +Can play solo more easily +Can allow small groups to punch above their weight +Forces you to improve your execution, which can make you a better player even when controlling one toon. -Requires more RL money for subs, or more grinding for plex. This can lead to situations where people end up doing more farming, and not less. -More self sufficiency means less need to make friends -Relatively large investment and maintenance cost #Multiboxers generate vast sums of isk, ore, and other goods. This can effectively diminish the incomes of other players, but it also has a suppressing effect on the prices of goods. So, does their activity end up being a net positive or negative for players? I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer, but I think it might depend on what you get into, and how easy it is for other people to multibox. For example, if you do something that is popular for multiboxers, their economic activity will probably have a greater impact on your income, than it would on someone who does something that isn’t popular with multiboxers. #Some players view multiboxing itself as a form of cheating. I disagree, but it does have a negative impact on some players’ morale. Once again, no one likes playing with a cheater. #Do note that being able to Dual box offers a tremendous advantage. Of course, there times when adding another account will create a break point, but you you’ll typically see diminishing returns for each account added after that.
Video from the perspective of the multiboxing ganker, Jasion Kusion
Edit: I created 7 poll questions about multiboxing in the following thread. I know I should have created them from the get go, and put them here. But I didn’t think about it. Anyway, I put them in a new thread in order to get the best possible sample size. Please check it out if you would like to vote.
For the most part multiple characters allow you to specialise for different aspects of the game; many have a PvP character, a trading character and an industrial character.
It also allows people like Jason Kusion to do what he does, cause mayhem.
For the majority out there is just for more farming , or a a ton of industry alts, PI alts, trading alts, cyno chain alts for JF, etc.
Now with capital proliferation , most of the nullsec powerblocks also impose players to have a subcapital char and a capital one with the ability to multibox those , but that’s if you want to get serious with null life. For some alliances is not mandatory and I can think of PH here.
In my opinion it is not healthy for the game , it never was and now we’re playing Alts Online/Titans Online.
Everybody do that in every game. That is literally the first thing someone thinks when seeing something new, when playing for some time, thinking that there was everything known already. That its some kind of trick or bug or something not allowed.
If the game would not allow multiboxing, and it would have a lot simpler rules, then everyone would just think - ok, I know how to do that, I will do that to that player next time.
Being ganked by 25 ships controlled by one guy is what damages player morale.
Few mind losing and loss, but under those circumstances it’s just laughably broken.
I think most victims of this display of ‘clever skill’ and ‘tactical genius’ couldn’t give a rats a** whether botting or input broadcasting is involved - they just find it incredibly sad to see the lengths one person will go to to ‘win’ in EVE, and demoralizing to see how easy it is to do and how supported it is within the game.
Likewise for multi-boxing mining fleets, ratting Ishtar fleets or whatever.
It’s a joke in EVE.
It makes a joke of EVE.
It breaks PvP, it breaks the economy.
I’ve played many, many MMO’s, and the multi-boxing situation in EVE is ridiculous and incredibly broken. It would be unheard of to enter a PvP fight in say, World of Warcraft, and lose a Rogue vs Rogue fight not because the other guy was better or had more skill or even better gear, but because he attacked you with 25 multi-boxed Rogues.
One of the things I hate most about EVE is that large scale multi-boxing is allowed.
It’s one of the reasons I never recommend the game to anyone else.
Outside of High Sec there are people multi-boxing so many ships at once that they accidentally warp their Titan to the wrong place and get it killed because they can’t keep track of all their accounts.
That’s an example from just last month.
We all know the game is rife with it, High, Low and Null.
Pretty sure yeah.
I mean, like I said above, it’s not just ganking. It’s mining, ratting, spies, Titan pilots etc etc
The whole gameplay ethos of EVE is corrupt in a way that long term players either can’t see, don’t care about, or actually enjoy.
It’s become an intrinsic part of EVE to such a degree that few stop to think about what’s wrong with it anymore.
lets suppose you use 2 characters to avoid for example standing loss
that means the system is ■■■■ and probably should change so one can do the same thing with one char
edit:
btw people talk about one pvp char and one pve char…
the char cant board a pve ship , or a pvp ship? the char cant trade? cant haul ?
people like to have many chars to avoid consequences , most because of ■■■■ systems of a 15 year old game
some people are just afraid of being noticed so they like to have 200 “chars”
you cant call that a character btw because you need to have a character to be a character
The precision required simply is not possible with more than 5 accounts without input-broadcasting. But it’s cool that people think they can just post something refuting all evidence to the contrary and think players will just be like “Oh, ok… herrrrrp…”
20+ accounts? That’s just sad and pathetic that anyone needs to even approach that… just for cheap shots at mostly helpless players.
But hey, 20 accounts is $$$ in CCPs pocket. I understand why they let it fly. Still cheating, but I understand.
Just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean nobody else can.
That he streams his activities for all and sundry to view means that CCP are able to view his operations and I have little doubt that they’ve looked long and hard at his operation due to the amount of complaints that they get about him. The fact that he hasn’t been banned suggests CCP have found no evidence of him input broadcasting.
But hey, 20 accounts is $$$ in CCPs pocket. I understand why they let it fly.
Or that they turn a blind eye because a) everyone else is doing it b) $ c) fear of community backlash.
EVE is mostly run on how likely it would be that any action taken against anyone would lead to riots and player loss. We all know they are terrified of upsetting the power blocs and the famous players. We know they fear community backlash (see Drone aggression back peddle).
They don’t have enough spare community to play with to risk upsetting too many people, so they don’t.
You’re only picking the ‘obvious conclusion’ that agrees with you.
There are other ‘obvious conclusions’.
Even if he somehow has superhuman account juggling abilities, this still stands:
Stuff like this is why conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. People make up stuff they don’t know, and because they don’t know, they resort to:
Which in your case is: “CCP must not be banning him because of $/backlash”.
This isn’t even the pot calling the kettle black, this is just pointing at itself through a mirror.
Edit: Multiboxing is fine. The fact that you’re all still only talking about Kusion is evidence enough that there aren’t that many people who multibox to the degree where it’d be detrimental to the game. (almost ALL of these threads are literally just about him and only him). CCP’s already taken changes to address the largest problem makers (i.e. nullsec Rorquals), and will be working to make auto-Drone aggro a thing of the past.
If you think something else, that’s still just your opinion vs mine, not my insane conspiracy theory vs your facts. You don’t have access to the facts.
You don’t know.
You just think you do.
Anything you say contrary to what I just said is you making stuff up you don’t know too, but you can’t see it because you’re so convinced you are right.
I’m not. I talked about at least 5 other things. How many more other things would you like me to add? I can talk about far more than Kusion.
All you’ve talked about is conspiracy theories, so I guess you could talk about a lot more, but none of it would be useful. It’d be a huge waste of everyone’s time.
Like all of this nonsense.
Also, where did you talk about any other multiboxers? You’ve just been talking about Kusion this whole time. Got any names for others?
So you don’t have names for anyone other than Kusion.
What I gather is that you’re lying and you’re overexaggerating how much of an issue this is (your feelings are making you imagine multibox gankers is a lot bigger of an issue than it actually is).
