I have no idea if this could be implemented or what the ramifications would be, so I’m just going to throw it out there… Comments welcome, although please appreciate that I haven’t given this extensive thought.
Multi-boxing Nerf
• Multi-boxing is limited to five (5) active accounts per client installation. This means if you have more than five (5) accounts, you can only launch up to five (5) at a time.
• Multi-boxers can no longer fleet up. All accounts on a client install can fleet up with a maximum of one (1) account to each unique fleet. This means if you have five (5) accounts, only one (1) account can be in the same fleet at any given time.
. . . . .
Full disclaimer: The first doesn’t affect me (I’m usually only running 1 account), but the second would when I occasionally mine with all 3 accounts.
VPN’s and Virtual Machines exist. There is absolutely no way CCP could enforce a 5-account limit. The same reason why they can’t keep players from multiboxing Alpha accounts.
There are ways to enforce it, but CCP has shown in the past that they are not capable. Their poor execution would only give people who know how to sneakily circumvent the new limitations an edge.
If I own 3 computers and have 5 accounts each on them, there is no way for CCP to know whether I’m controlling all 15 accounts myself, or if I have two roommates who are playing EVE as well. What are they going to do? Require a driver’s license, photo ID, and social security number from each of us just to play a game?
I don’t think CCP should even try to enforce a hard limit to multiboxing, people would easily circumvent it with multiple machines, VMs and similar.
EVE is pretty unique in that it allows multiboxing. Other games which are much less accepting of multiboxing still have multiboxers, like I have seen in WoW, RuneScape and Albion back when multiboxing was banned in those games.
Instead of a hard limit to multiboxing, I do believe CCP could add ‘soft’ limits to multiboxing to make it less practical.
CCP should keep multiboxers in mind when they design the game. And whenever something helps multiboxers more than it helps regular players, it probably shouldn’t be added in that form.
Examples:
remove drone assist
remove the remote part of remote shipboard compression
remove fleet regroup
Such changes won’t kill multiboxing as multiboxing always will have advantages in a game like EVE, but it would make multiboxing less competitive against other players.
Or more rigorous changes:
Add a 1 second freeze after bringing any EVE client into focus
You want to multibox twenty ships? Sure, you are allowed to do so. It will take you at least 20 seconds to give commands to them all instead of 2 seconds with the right software.
CCP should not remove multiboxing from EVE ever, but CCP can make changes to make multiboxing less oppressive.
They can make it so hard that Joe Casual won’t take the effort to circumvent it and place no-parole punishment on it, so every cracknerd investing into 12 multibox alts can find them all instabanned if they just take a deeper look into how these chars cooperate. Because it is hilariously easy to detect a multiboxer just from how the chars behave over a longer period of time. Especially if you have access to the server logs.
And the few that still slip trough the net won’t have an impact on the game that the majority would notice.
But thats all moot, CCP simply don’t want to limit multiboxing, because it brings them good money.
