New player thoughts - Multiboxing

Communications Center General Discussion
1

Hey new player here just giving my observations on this game. I actually have tried to play Eve since 2006 and then again in 2015. I’ve returned again and this time has been the best experience out of all 3 especially with the AIR program and free million skill points. The UI is also much improved and the YouTube community has many guides now which is great.

Now I will discuss a controversial topic which is multiboxing. I have experience with many games with this feature. I’ve multiboxed world of Warcraft for leveling, Ultima Online Outlands, and now I box 3 accounts on Eve. The problem with Eve multiboxing is the infinite scalability (depending on computer power)

I compare this to the problem with the game Lost Ark. in Lost Ark, you need certain currency/items to upgrade. Each character was limited daily on how much currency/items they could get to upgrade. This could be circumvented by creating new characters. This led to people playing 26 characters a day to do the menial tasks for currency. This obviously burnt people out and people complained so now they have the 6 character limit, and people have now vowed to never to return to the game unless you can only play 1 character and make the same progress.

A common argument from the Lost Ark community was that you don’t HAVE to make that many characters or pay for progression, you’ll just be at your own pace and it’s not really a pvp game. We all play our own way.

But, One of the biggest problems in games today is their META and End game loop if the meta is creating 26 characters, people will be inclined to do that, others will quit. Some of the people in the Lost Ark community defended this play style as being optional and that critics should just play another game. Well they did and Lost Ark lost 90% of its player base from launch because of their immersion breaking and fatiguing META

After being back for two weeks I’m worried to see similar symptoms in the EvE community. With the sentiments of “I’ll quit if they get rid of multiboxing” and CCP seemingly taking the short term game of cashing in on the whales with disregard to long term quality gameplay.

I believe Eves situation is much better than Lost Arks however. The multiboxing/character meta is not as monotonous as Lost Ark, but it still affects the economy and gameplay.

I propose to scale back to max 3 accounts playable at once. Enforce that with whatever means they have. Ultima Online Outlands has this similar setup as they know how limiting one account can be. Outlands also has built in restrictions against multiboxing pvp and enforce it with bans. They have a great rule set for just 3 accounts allowing multiboxing mining/lumber jacking but not pvp.

This scales back the META to a reasonable level. There will be people who circumvent this with virtual machines or whatever method they choose but like in UO Outlands it will be far less likely as people don’t want to risk their hard earned accounts.

This will make it more accessible and sensible to any new players who try the game. Players look at the META as soon as they look at the game and if they don’t like a games meta they will quit early or not try it at all. Eve is already a niche game, infinite scalability with multiboxing as the meta doesn’t help that. I bet the 10+ account multiboxers would actually be relieved that they don’t have to play on that many accounts.

These are my thoughts a new player

2

i think this would easily kill off most of the activity in null sec and that is not a good thing, minerals will get used up real fast and the mining fleets won’t be able to keep up with demand
Personally i think this will go a long way to killing the game pretty well

3

so eve is a pvp game and you cant infinite scale your accounts in pvp situation! you need a lot of attention on PvP chars and you cant split it to much. i would assume that for the majority of players the limit would be at about 3 chars. depends on the situation it could be a 4th but then your going to run out of awareness of your chars

my personal limit was 5 chars at the same time in the same fight. i got 6th and 7th char as a scout but this situation was realy hard and i probably wouldnt do this again.

i´m pretty sure there are a few ppl they can do more in an active pvp situation but still it would be hard.

and now, anybody will come with the argument " HS gankers are multiboxing 10+ accounts to gank " or " EOS multibox setup is more then 10+ accounts and they kill a lot "
gankers multibox that much accounts on an “easy pvp situation” where you warp to a target and just shoot it. you normaly dont need to move that much or do any other complex pvp movements
the EOS multibox setup is a similar way. they cant do a complex fight against another group. they just setup their setup at a range and snipe anything they can reach. if someone gets to close they use their Jump Destroyer and jump out. if you catch them you will kill them.

the next ans most important point is, eve is a niche game as you said before, and it doesnt have a real big playerbase. if you come up with a hardcap on chars you can use there are a few things that will / can happen :

  1. playerbase finds a way to abuse this and still can fly their 2018766354ß12 alts at the same time
  2. CCP implement this and its so good that you cant abuse it, then CCP will loose lot of money for all the payed accounts
  3. some player will leave the game and this could maybe to much that CCP will close its server because you “banned” a lot of alt chars and then you have the quitter wich also result in a lost of income

in my eyes its to late to regulate the mass of alts you can have. they had to have this at the early state of the game ( 2003 - 2005 )
i´m sure it had to be the best of ccp if they had it to an specific account limit but i´m also pretty sure they never could see this coming how this is going out of hands for some ppl.

2 Likes
4

Multiboxing is not infinitely scalable. It caps off at the persons willingness/resource to manage the accounts.

So far I have seen 1 guy manage 40 ships doing incursion HQs. (With t1 ships)

In PVP people probably will fall apart boxing 40 ships. So, it ideally limits down to 2-5 alts? For subcap stuff. idk tho everyone is different.

OP needs to see that it is in CCP’s economic interest to have players multiboxing. What company wants to cut off their revenues?

1 Like
5

What is the specific multiboxing META in Eve Online that you’re complaining about, OP? Otherwise this is just a vagueposting soapbox ramble.

The only thing I can think of that is widespread is nullsec mining fleets. Anything else is not all 3 of: mainstream, infinitely scalable, and the META.

1 Like
6

Talk about making whales out of minnows here, damn.

1 Like
7

And just exactly what is it about losing 3 ships to NPCs in 0.9 systems…your sole killboard so far…makes you suddenly so desperately concerned about the mythical people with 26 billion accounts ? Why do you even care…given that you’ve provided zero evidence you ever met any ?

I smell the distinct whiff of ulterior motive…as there’s really no reason why a ‘new player’ would even care about the matter.

8

how about adding an ewar module that when successful causes the target to drop its fleet? perhaps that becomes an ECM script, and the current four ECM’s are collapsed into four other ECM scripts nope, that’s crazy OP

9

OP proposes to change the game in a way where his number of accounts should also be the max number. How… convenient (one could use other words here as well).

2 Likes
10

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.