Multiboxing - Curse or blessing?

Communications Center General Discussion
1
What do you think?
    1. It’s good
    1. It’s not so good
0 voters

Eve has plenty of unique characteristics. One among them is that you’re allowed to play with multiple characters at the same time. Not only is it allowed, it is encouraged even. For some corps, having multiple alts has become mandatory.

Personally, I’m not a fan of it. First of all, we’re playing an MMO, right? Isn’t it the point that you make friends with people and together overcome your challenges? If you think a partyfinder is bad because you don’t have to socialize with anyone, how bad is multiboxing then that eliminates the need to have other players altogether?

What irks me is that I feel that it devalues the impact and the experience of each individual player. If I join a corp, and there are 20 members, but it’s just two people controlling all of them, I don’t feel like I’m part of a small gang ready to cause some carnage. Instead, I feel like I’m just another asset for somebody else’s single player game, and not even a necessary one at that.

But to be fair, what are some of the good things that Multiboxing brings?

It does give you considerable player agency. You’re not dependent on friends to be available, so you can tackle complicated challenges and do it all in your own style. When doing fleets with others, by doing multiboxing you can cover boring but necessary roles and still enjoy partaking in the one that you’re having the most fun with.

It is a rather difficult topic to broach, I feel, and perhaps I’m just too biased or not seeing the whole picture. There’s a lot more to be said about this topic (and I’ve already condensed it considerably from what I originally wanted to say), so I want to invite you to to voice your opinion.

What do you think about multiboxing? I want to hear what you have to say.

With several regards
-James Fuchs

5 Likes
2

I understand the need for multiboxing.

I feel it takes away the spirit of comradery. The goal of an MMO.

Take incursions for example. Before (when we had 3 spawns) it was filled with a majority of people some multiboxing such as scouts maybe 1-3 extra alts.

Now? You are just a pilot that can be replaced with a paladin box. I lost the human touch I had back in 2018-----today. It’s sad I am just replaceable by a 40-man fleet boxer in every community armor and shield. It’s due to CCP actions and us as a community. It’s wrong to blame CCP 100%.

I have and will always be a 1 account player knowing I will be at a disadvantage at nearly every level compared to others who make billions/hr. It is just the way I am.

8 Likes
3

I don’t like multibox play either.

Even though I have 5 accounts consisting of 12 characters, I mainly just use this character and whenever I log into the game, it’s only done with one character at a time.

2 Likes
4

How am I supposed to win in PvP unless I can field at least seven Leshaks against every enemy Retriever?

5 Likes
5

I’d point out that having two or more accounts doesn’t automatically mean one is most of the time going to field them at the same time. So one has to draw a distinction between multiple accounts and multiboxing.

Thus far I have only multiboxed for scouting purposes…where it is extremely useful. But the main purpose of having more than one account is to simply live other Eve lives. Thus, although this account is in a corp…I have other characters that are not in any corp and in which I can just do as I please and am not beholden to any corporation. For me, having multiple accounts is more about having multiple characters I can log into different lives, than it is about forming fleets on my own. But…the latter may come later.

4 Likes
6

There is no need to. Multiboxing means playing multiple accounts simultaneously (on same server).

3 Likes
7

I have no issue with multiboxing, if you think something is simple, try doing it on 10 accounts. There’s a diminishing margin of return on each additional account, because it takes skill to utilize them effectively, so it’s not a problem.

2 Likes
8

I use it for scouting. I can field up to 3 toons including my main, to get more I’d need some of the fancy programmes the toe controller guys are using, but I’ve not needed it thus far and only ever needed all 3 once.

9

I multibox every day-- I have ten accounts.

We’re (multiboxers) playing a different game than you are.

10

Indeed, it is like a rift between 2 completely opposite worlds.

11

I wish it wasnt a thing. I find the idea of creating fleets out of individual players a lot more exciting than multiboxing.

5 Likes
12

You can already do that.

Nobody forces you to multibox.

13

Multiple accounts are CCP’s bread and butter.

3 Likes
14

I didn’t vote either way for the following reasons.

  • This poll will not matter to CCP, our collective opinions don’t matter to them.
  • Other players multi-boxing (omega or not) has no affect on how I play Eve Online.
  • If some fools want to waste good money on omega to play more than one account, why should I attempt stop them?
  • I have watched a few YouTubers multi-boxing and it doesn’t appeal to me at all. Then again, all of the omega benefits don’t appeal to me either.

I have purchased plex in this game, I got some free plex not long ago. Then I was offered a taste of omega which I turned down. I will continue to play this game the way I desire, and they can continue to play it the way they like. If people want to pay for omega and buy a whole fleet of Avatars, do you really think for one hot minute they will be coming to molest me? They will be after the bigger boats.

15

I beg to differ. Plenty of game mechanics, recent nerfs and the fact that there are less actual players than before are pretty much forcing us to multibox.

It is almost as if CCP was specifically designing the rewards, thresholds and limits to ensure that players will not cooperate and instead just multibox it.

16

I have seven accounts. Generally the only time I’m using all seven is krabbing or gas huffing. Sometimes I’ll bring 'em all of its a structure bash.
For pvp, I don’t like trying to manage more than three, preferably only two. Of these, one will almost always be a prober/scout. In a roaming gang, one in tackle and I’ll bring a third in a dps cruiser if numbers are low.
In a fleet, I’ll often take 2x logi, or a HIC and a dread. Maybe throw in a sabre as a fourth occasionally.
Trying to do too many different fleet roles just means doing all of them badly.
More beating hearts in fleet is always better.
It’s also very nice to be able to go off on an npsi roam with old friends in different alliances and still have combat pilots available at home of ■■■■ hits the fan.
I don’t have a problem with multibox play.

17

I have no issue with multi boxing but there should be no aspect of the game that cannot be done by a player with a single account. However the one thing I am very against is the fact you cannot fly ships like a jump freighter without the need of a second character. There should be some mechanic that allows a solo player to use a jump freighter without the need of another account.

1 Like
18

Teleportation isn’t enough for you?

19

This may already be possible using the deployable cyno beacons.
Form a fleet, burn to where you want to jump to, deploy Beacon. Death clone back to your jump freighter and jump.
It would be a very high risk manoeuvre as you won’t have eyes on your destination system when you jump your very expensive ship in.
Personally, I’m very unwilling to jump to a Cyno I didn’t light personally. There’s very few people I trust to light a Cyno for me.

EDIT: I have not actually tried this so am not sure if it would work.

20

I mean regardless if you have 200 APM (actions per minute) or not, having 10 ships versus 1 is a pretty significant advantage? But rather than exploring the skilled use of multi-boxing, I would rather hear about how people feel about it in general.
For example, specifically for you Aiko, if you alone could take out the same targets that you’re currently engaging with 2 other multiboxes, would you be OK with doing away with multi-boxing altogether? How would you feel about it then?

With synchronised regards
-James Fuchs

1 Like