I think that line of thought doesn’t lead to a good outcome. Many mechanics were nerfed or completely removed that ensured weath and power of earlier generations of players. But if you identify a problem, you have to act on it, else the negative effects will simply stockpile over time to a degree that simply isn’t manageable any more. And I am absolutely convinced that while in the early years alt-chars were only a QoL thing and not much of a problem, mass multiboxing today absolutely is a problem that harms the game’s future. Mass-Alts create an unhealthy environment, economically and socially.
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they also pay for the hamster feed to keep the servers limping along.
ban multiboxing and CCPs income will take a massive nosedive. to the point where they may not be able to keep the hamsters fed.
I kind of agree with you, but it is not that simple when it comes to ganking for example.
Most activities doesn’t need multiboxing. Peoples multibox out of the greed, like industrial players, miners, pve’ers. The multibox to raise their profits, eliminate competition and in case of PVE to be able to do high end content whenever they want without need to form a party with other players (and thus raise their profits).
But when it comes to ganking, we received some massive nerfs to the activity, new players must be omega to join us which heavily reduced the overall ganking capability for big targets. On top of that the activity is boring and no matter what target you are hunting, you will spend hours not finding any. Not very fun gameplay if you ask me so it is hard to sell it to the new players that wants to join us. So the ganking right now is done by few dedicated hardcore players who are playing over 12 hours a day and multiboxing X clients. Add buffs to survivalability of our targets (mining ships, battleshps) the lower player count overall and then tell me where we are supposed to find 40 real players to kill one Orca in 0.5.
I would prefer if multiboxing wasn’t a thing, but there are two problems with it:
- most content is too slow, and not active enough so peoples are often multiboxing to engage a bit more in the game
- current game is balanced around multiboxing nd it is not just ganking, PI, industry, that all would have to be rebalanced heavily if multiboxing wasn’t a thing, and that just won’t happen
Well, the “child is in the well” already as we say here. Of course they can’t simply “ban multiboxing” from day X on. But, what they should do is trim all their development teams to a) create only new content that is so demanding for attention and clickspeed that it can hardly be multiboxed manually without huge efficiency losses. and b) step-by-step change existing content into the same direction.
Simple example is Logistic Piloting: I have seen people Dualboxing Guardians quite well and there might be a handfull of godlike nerds that can tripleboxing Logis decently. But the efficiency goes down drastically after the second or third account doing it. Because you will miss broadcasts, you will miss evasive maneuvers and overheat cycles, you will fail to catch rep targets more often and so on.
If all content would be that way, mining, ganking, structure grinds etc. pp. - mass multiboxing simply wouldn’t be a problem any more.
Nah, can’t agree with you on that one. Like every other activity, Ganking should be a cooperation of different players, not a 1-man-show of some hardcore nerd multiboxing a dozen Catalysts, Talos, whatever. If the activity is so unattractive and boring we can talk about ways to make it more attractive, less boring. But not use it as excuse why this game needs mass multiboxing.
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none of which addresses my point.
ban or severely limit multiboxing and a lot of accounts will go unsubbed.
where will the income to cover that shortfall for CCP come from?
Over time, from a more individually competitive, more socal game environment with a more healthy economy that is more attractive to new and casual players than the current one. Thats why changes should also be made over time, so the multi-accounts of decade old vets that will surely get unsubbed will be compensated by new players who actually find EVE to be a nice game where real cooperation of real players trumps any vet’s altchar-empire.
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Imo I think the only thing I would use multiboxing for is navigating flthrough null and low sec with scout alts
Now that’s some seriously wishful thinking. You think Pearl Abyss is going to actively discourage multiple accounts from the limited player base of EVE in the hope that more people will just magically come to the game? This is a pretty niche game.
The fact I multibox has no impact on how you choose to play EVE. As for how I choose to play EVE, lets just say wormhole living is tough enough. Not having a prober alt would make it even tougher.
“Just get a corpmate to do the probing” you say? Fine, what happens when the only prober in the fleet needs to go AFK, or gets called away by IRL issues? We refit probes onto unbonused hulls and take an age to find a chain out of wherever we are?
You want to play with a single account? You do you my dude. Multiboxing has been a part of the game for 20 years. Deal with it.
No, I don’t think that. They always look for the short term profit and never had a decades-long vision of the game.
Looks like you haven’t read what I said earlier in the topic. I said “if if was up to me, I would limit the game to one client only, but you could use all 3 chars at the same time if you could manage them”. This way you could still use QoL alts like a scout, a prober, a hauler, but mass-multiboxing (like 10, 15, 20 accs grinding Ice, Ore, Gas, Structures, Plexes, Incursions) wouldn’t be possible any more.
I do. I am already so filthy rich that I simply have no need to multibox any more. I can just chill with one acc, do whatever I like, occasionally log in a second to scout or scan or help someone and leave all the rest to other players. I am well beyond grinding resources or needing dps-alts in a fleet. But I am not arguing for myself, I look at the game as a whole and that said, I am deeply convinced that mass-multiboxing (everything above 3 accs at a time) is hurting the economy, the social structure and the gaming environment as a whole.
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Multiboxing is important to maximize Salt/Hour.
How many man hours does it take to build T1 destroyer? a hundred?
How many for 1 Battleship?
An Orca? a Freighter? a Carrier? a Titan?
If you actually knew the answer to those…your statement that I quoted would not be from such an asinine position.
EVE would be a far better place right now if all these resources for all those countless Titans, Supercarriers, Dreads, Fax, Carriers, Rorqs, Orcas and so on would have had to be manually harvested by real players.
Because we would have probably a lot less of them in the game right now and each one would have a lot higher value. The majority of conflicts would still happen in smaller, cheaper, replacable and more agile ships instead of the game becoming Hotdrop Online™. I witnessed a time when barely anyone had a capital alt in Lowsec and when the 0.0 corps/alliances didn’t use capfleets on every occasion to curbstomp anyone who could remotely fight back. Game was a lot fun back then when fielding a Battleship really meant something.
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The simplest way for massive multiboxing to go away would be to stop selling skill extractors and only sell skill injectors via NES.
Thats not what I said. But if (massive) multiboing is not a thing, then ganking needs to be made easier because without that, thats essentially another ganking nerf and more safety for everyone and thus less destructions. You will probably won’t agree that that is needed though.
Multiboxing is a playstyle that doesent appeal to most people afaik. But it doesent really cause harm as far as i can tell. Queue the nastygrams
You never tried to mine ice in highsec I guess 
. Getting ganked by 15 clear multiboxed alts also doesn’t feel exactly great. Other forms of multiboxing like PVE, PI or industry doesn’t have their impact on other others easily noticeable, but it is there.
In short, yes it is harmful to those not doing it.
The ones getting attacked are the multi-boxers, right?
Because, y’know, Ice mining…
–Gadget is just sayin’
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Yes because they are probably too lazy to do the networking to build a real and dedicated group like in many MMOs.
So, they just play in their own bubble being socially awkward in RL and now in a pixel game. Wishing they could multibox RL.
The utopia vision for EVE would be a multiboxless world. I say utopia as it will never happen. 
Games are supposed to be a pastime, so I can get this.
Some people take their hobbies to infinite levels - most do not - and many will do so for while and then move on.
–MMO Gadget
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I can absolutely understand your point, from the perspective of someone who likes ganking and/or believes that it is crucial for the games economy (aka the destruction coming from ganking really matters), yes then ganking should be made easier in return.
My point of view is that I would be willing to bet all my assets (and double that), that if CCP would remove ganking today, in 6 months nobody would even notice it was ever a thing. I find it an economically insignificant thing, compared to what is daily built and harvested and traded all around the EVE universe. But I think it is an important thing that it is possible, so there is danger of being attacked even in highsec and there are no “safe zones”, that is why I am not against ganking as a whole and would absolutely support a ganking mechanics buff that could equalize a mass-multiboxing nerf. And I am open for most solutions, as long as it isn’t just “dps up, ehp down”. Piracy would deserve a whole own expansion with mechanics to disable or delay CONCORD intervention, chances to get away after a robbery, fighting back the NPC-police to a degree and clear benefits coming from an outlaw-career. However, thats probably content for another topic.
As you mentioned, it can be good or bad depending on the context. The important aspect of this game is that any experienced or dedicated player has one or more (mainly 3) additional accounts for different purposes. And you have to take it into account while doing PVP or PVE that you have to compete with such an “aberration”. Some multiboxing activities can be very ‘draining’ which causes attention fatigue. A better question is: “How many multiboxing accounts is good to have?”