I don’t doubt that. I just wanted to point out that your “translation” is simply an “opinion”. One you are free to have of course, but I doubt it holds much substance. Based on my long-year experience and conversation with other vets, envy and poverty are among the smallest reasons why people oppose mass-multiboxing. At least among the people I find worth listening to because they are experienced as well and caring for the greater long-term good of the game.
Both are different scenarios. I am not opposed to people having as much Omegas as they like. I am against a game design that promotes their usage all at the same time for a simple purpose that ramps up too well with just bringing N+1 numbers. That can be resource harvesting, but can also be DPS. Every content in the game should be at least so complex in terms of paying attention, clicking and making decisions that it is humanly impossible to command more than 3 pilots at the same time efficiently (rare exceptions). Let me give you an example:
There are many good Logi-Pilots out there, they can make an amazing job holding up your fleetmates and for some corps they are worth pure gold in fights. Many can even dualbox two Guardians, but most will notice a decrease in efficiency. Dualboxing two Logistics will mess up locks from time to time, you will miss broadcasts, overheat too late or too long, have capmanagement issues under neutpressure and so on. While you still be able to rep more than 1 Guardian, you don’t rep 200%, you maybe rep ~170% of what an equally skilled guy focused 1-Guardian-Pilot could rep. Add a third one and you will mess up even more, giving only 200% return for fielding 300% ships. Now of course you have some really outstanding players, those one-of-a-kind geniuses who can manage 2 Guardians and even 1-2 Faxes and a scout at the same time and be spot on with it. But thats rare exceptions. Really really rare. Over the 15 years+ I play the game, I have barely met a handful people who could pull that off without losing large parts of their efficiency.
In this scenario, there is absolutely no issue with “multiboxing”, because you’ll get diminishing returns. Like a “stacking penalty”. You can maybe use 2 Guardians, but you can’t use 8. Or 12. Or 20.
What I see as a problem is only “mass-multiboxing”, like 1 player simultanenously controlling 3+ accounts because the task the game gives to him scales too well. When it comes to Ice-Mining or even Ore-Mining in larger belts, 10 Hulks simply mine 1000% of 1 Hulk, the roids are always big enough. And they are easily controllable by 1 single player because operating them doesn’t put any strain on the player. But that means most of those resources will go into one guys pockets. Casuals, Newbros or even smaller groups will barely get crumbs of that belt while once rich vet gets richer and richer. You can see that in HS-Icebelts every day over and over again. Single-Miners or Small newbie groups try to do a mining op, one mass-boxer logs in and erases the belt in 30 minutes, then loggs off to come back in 4 hours when the next belt spawns. Thats not helpful, thats frustrating for the next generation of players that we really really need to keep in the game.
Same goes, to a degree, for ganking and drone-assist fleets. I am absolutely pro-ganking in terms of that it should be in the game, but not in it’s current form. This mass-multiboxing of high-dps ships is just their only way around the ever-growing hurdles put before higsec-engagements and again it causes only frustration for those getting ganked because they get the feeling “nothing i can do against someone using 10, 20, 50 ships!!!”. Newbros or Casuals simply can’t understand that gankers simply have no other way because of the HP- increases and more and more restrictions over the years.
My personal sweetspot (yes it’s also just a personal opinion you are free to disagree with) would be to allow only one instance of EVE Online being run on every PC, but you can online all your 3 characters at the same time. Thats more then enough for QoL-tasks like using a scout or a trader, a cyno-alt or 2 miners and a booster… But if you want more, you would have to work with multiple PCs, Virtual Machines and all kinds of tricks that would give you lots of diminishing returns to add more and more characters to your direct control. And of couse a complete re-design of mining and ganking to make professionalism in fine-control much more rewarding instead of rewarding just bringing “another alt”. But, as said, probably won’t happen as long as CCP just makes a lot of money with mass-multiboxing. But one can dream.
