Don’t blame the gamer - blame the game (or the bots). Honestly, you should be ecstatic that players still want to mine - what with the moon drills and everything.
If you nerf mining much more than it already has you won’t see players taking this up as an activity/profession. Less players logging in for any kind of activity (even mining) doesn’t bode well for the game.
Wouldn’t matter to me. You could nerf the boosts of the Orca by 50% and I’d still be pulling in what the Orca is rated at right now. Would just take me longer to clear out belts…
Make all the changes you want, but it still basically boils down to time, experience, methods, and money. Something that neither new players, nor casuals, have. And that’s just the way it is…
I don’t want to nerf mining. I want to nerf massmultibox mining.
And giving the Mining Command ships a more active role to actually “support” their fleet with tractoring in, compressing and storing locally is a step towards that. We can absolutely talk about more convenience options that support this active role. But nothing that benefits having the Orca semi-afk as altchar on a third, fourth, tenth client.
More target locks, more tractoring speed, higher shield command boni, better remote-rep features… even more ship bay for having some spare combat ships to have some logis available if you get ambushed by a small gang, more combat capabilities - all fine. But only feactures that are to be used actively.
The only players who are AFK’ing in Orcas are solo drone miners, which is not and never was intended as its purpose. As I said before, if you are using an Orca in conjunction with a fleet of exhumers, you can’t AFK. Ever.
Well, not semantically “totally afk”. You know what I mean. We are using Exhumers plus Orca all the time and the Orcapilot is simply an “afk alt”. It requires no input. It just boosts and is fleetwarped every now and then. That I like to see changed. I am not talking about “sending some drones out and go to school afk” stuff.
In that case, I will amend my statement. If you are multiboxing an Orca and a fleet of exhumers, there’s no way you can AFK that. Now, if you are an Orca pilot in some random gang or corp mining op and that’s your only job, then yeah, you can probably AFK for a bit.
The ability to limit multiboxing has long since sailed. Unless you want some really “out-of-the-box” thinking.
Any attempt to do that would instantly cut their playerbase in half or more. CCP would be cutting their own throat…
Yeah, unless it was balanced. One idea off the top of my head: limit the maximum amount of time per EVE installation to 20 hours in a 24-hour cycle. So that means 10 accounts = 20 hours total (or 2 hours per account).
Again, there’s nothing they could do to stop it. We have access to infinite free accounts, infinite free email addresses, virtual machines, and VPN’s…
Yeah, it would probably just end up being a speed bump for the botters (VPN/virtual) and an inconvenience for everyone else.
I’m not sure if you rolled out “EVE 2” you’d be able to do much about VPN/virtual machines.
Yeah, EVE isn’t all that resource-intensive, especially when it’s in potato mode. With the computers we have these days, you can run 10 to 20 instances no problem.
Well, unfortunately thats right. It’s not only a gameplay design thing, its even more a mindset thing right now. If they would cut multiboxing to a degree it has too few benefits, people would leave EVE simply because they are pissed over having trained/subbed so many chars for years and being not “superior” any more.
It’s not even about being superior, it’s about the ability to get ■■■■ done. Even though this is an MMO, the vast majority of players are solo and have no inclination to join a group. If we were limited to one character only, no matter how well trained that character was, nothing would ever get done.
That reminds me of an awesome player corp name I once saw. Together We Solo
Nah, my vision would be that you need only one account, but can use the 3 Chars on it simultaneously. Or to give CCP some cash, u can use them as long as they have a MCT running.
So everyone could use their own little scout or hauler to “get things done”, but larger ops would require group cooperation.
Yeah, except that with VPN and virtual machines you’d be back exactly where we are. You only need one account now - but why have one when you can do twice as much with two?
This is all CCPs fault. When they required a separate ship for cynos it spiralled from there…
But then I wouldn’t be able to have PI on 72 different planets, and that would make me a sad Quake…
Edit: Wait, why the hell did I reply to my own post? I need some sleep…
If you seriously do PI on 72 planets… my hat’s off to you sir.
Nah, thats something some people would do, but not the vast majority. You can’t come up with a system that is 100000% failsave. Getting something done that works for 99% is pretty fine. And if the client works with Hardware checksum fingerprinting and at the same time the EULA says you get a full-ban of all accounts if you get caught, it would probably be enough to ensure that 99% of all players would really stick to it.
But as said, will never happen, because CCP wants the money from all those massmultiboxers.