All very good ideas, lets see if someone higher up reads this post.
Thank you
Welcome to Eve ! Twenty years of glorious unfairness…and long may it continue that way.
The lack of a level playing field, and the fact that we are born into a universe already populated by mega corporations some of which gained their stature in the shadiest manner, is precisely what makes Eve such a great game.
@ the OP
Agree with it or not, I do have to say it is well thought out and well written. +1 for actually taking the time to offer a potential solution or idea towards one rather than just complain about current mechanics.
That being said, I do agree with some of your points. I think, and this is just my opinion, that you are right about player inclusion. However, I think the player inclusion that is needed is both cooperative and adversarial participation rather than just a focus on NPCs…especially in FW, for example.
Eve is, after all, a game about conflict and cooperation. The idea is to get both sides engaged (no pun intended) in the game.
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The secret of steel 
Thank you all for your thoughtful feedback on this proposal. The aim is to enhance EVE Online by reducing multiboxing and fostering genuine player cooperation. By introducing more interactive and engaging site mechanics, we can create a more inclusive and dynamic environment for all capsuleers.
This approach is also likely to attract more individual players to the game, which, in the long run, should mean more subscriptions and more content for everyone. Your insights are invaluable as we continue to refine these ideas. Let’s work together to make New Eden a place where collaboration, skill, and growth are truly rewarded.
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@Phantom_Silver The ideas in your OP are among some of the greatest ideas I have ever read in my entire life. I approve everything in your OP, well done.
I’m sorry but i fail to understand how multiboxing affects the "collaboration: of ppl in the game. Probably you base your OP on some stats.
Persomally I do not have enough time to spend in gamem otherwise I peobably would already be in a corp chilling with the mates. I had plenty of opportunities to join a corp but RL is not allowing more time in game.
If someone is multiboxing, cheers to him, it is not easy.
I’m just a casual player, and “multiboxing” ppl are a non issue to me.
Cheers.
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Izzy. As a solo player, it’s great that you can enjoy the game casually without multiboxing being an issue for you. However, the challenge arises when multiboxing is used to dominate content, taking opportunities away from players like you who might not have the time or resources to compete with someone running multiple accounts.
The goal of this proposal is to create a more level playing field, so solo and casual players have a fairer chance to enjoy PvE and resource competition without being overshadowed by large-scale multiboxing operations. It’s not about making things harder for individuals—it’s about encouraging cooperation and making the game more enjoyable for everyone in the long term.
Your input helps balance the discussion, so thank you!
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I appreciate the presentation and format in your OP. I support the direction of the overall concept, but you missed some important details.
Your OP basically states this as a ‘given’. However you haven’t established which content is excessively multiboxed, nor how multiboxing makes said content ‘exclusionary’.
How have multiboxers reserved the site for their own use? What prevents other players from jumping in and taking part? Individual players are better at most tasks (assuming equal skill levels) as multiboxers who have to split their attention across multiple windows. How are the groups of actual players being out-competed by less-efficient multiboxers?
You also toss in ‘toxic’ but not sure how having a group take on a site makes them toxic? This word tends to be vastly overused for “anything I don’t like is toxic”.
You also mark it as ‘selfish’ but to the multiboxer, for instance, let’s say someone who’s paying for 5 accounts because he wants 5 accounts training or doing various things. Why shouldn’t he then use all 5 of his accounts at times to run other content that interests him? He’s paying for 5 accounts, shouldn’t he be able to enjoy doing whatever he likes on them? Again, ‘selfish’ shouldn’t be a replacement for “someone else is getting rewards that I want to get.”
If I show up at a reward site, it’s irrelevant to me whether the ships already there are multiboxed or a half-dozen individual players. The site is taken, either way. In fact, a multiboxer is probably better for me in that case, since I can count on his attention being split.
Sure these are good things to have in the game. That said, any MMO that tries to make group content require a well-balanced group of active individuals, generally finds said content gets limited to something like 5% of the player base. (Based on MMO reports of playerbase engagement with things like raids or complex dungeon scenarios.)
It’s not always possible to gather a half-dozen individuals who are all prepared and ready to run a specific type of content in a specific area. And EVE makes it much harder with it’s restrictive travel, fit, and skill requirements. That’s why people start multiboxing to begin with - so they can run what they want when they want.
CCP needs multiboxing for the income and the login numbers, because all these ‘active player groups’ waiting to run this content simply don’t exist. And restricting multiboxing won’t magically make new players appear and group up. MMO playerbases lean heavily towards solo players and always have.
I’m all for more active and engaging content, and rewarding participation over mere presence, but key issues need addressing:
- Which content is being multiboxed, in which seclevels, and how are multiboxers ‘excluding’ others?
- If your actual goal is to reduce the viability of multiboxing, as your language suggests, how does CCP replace the income from multiboxers?
- How do you propose to magically produce thousands of new players willing to travel to where you are and run the same content you want to run when you have the time to run it?
- What regions do you expect these new sites to exist in?
In general, it’s unhelpful to suggest/request that CCP remove content that other paying players are using and enjoying. It makes more sense to add new types of targeted content in the appropriate areas than to simply remove a playstyle you apparently disapprove of.
Disclaimer: I do not multibox and never have.
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Multiboxing is akin to a force multiplier. Activities (ganking, etc.) that previously took time to gather and organize can now be automated, macro’d, dominated and botted to death.
It really seems like there should be some sort of inherent upper limited on the number of clients one can multibox (I don’t even begin to know what a reasonable number would be, but probably less than 5).
Or require a more expensive subscription just for multiboxing, ie: another $9.99 per month and no option to PLEX. You want to multibox with 20 accounts? Fine - no free PLEX’ing ($ only).
That would seem to solve both the content and botting issues…
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That some content simply requires 3, 5, 6, 10 ships to even attempt it for example. The multiboxer can log in these required ships in specialized fits as often as he wish and just grind that content, effectively removing the site for all those logging in after him.
The lone solo guy has to wait for 2, 4, 5, 9 other corpmates to log in, form a fleet and give it a go.
In the end it leads to a scenario where all the most lucrative content around is basically 90% farmed by guys who bring their “own fleet” as soon as they can, all the profits ending up in one persons wallet. And by far less content is available in the prime-time of the corp where at least the chance arises that a “cooperation fleet” is formed with the profits shared amongst multiple members.
You can easily witness that in HS Icebelts or WH corporations, even a single heavy multiboxer can easily eradicate all home-content in there and basically leave close to nothing for all the other people. Or even worse: all the others have to farm outside the home at a far greater risk, but the multiboxer can justl log in 7 in the morning, bring his own “fleet” and does all sites in an hour multiboxing his Marauder/Eos Fleet for example. You can witness it in Highsec where all the Homefronts are effectively run buy 5-boxing solo-guys. When I try to bring some newbros into a Homefront fleet, we can often travel and travel and travel and no sites are left or instantly taken by a highly-perfectionized multibox-setup where real newbros due to their lack of skills can’t really compete.
You’re right, Arthur. I’d say no more than 3, same amount of character slots in an account.
Exactly. Wanna cheat? Pay for it, chump!
I just want to say I agree with OP. Many things from the launcher to the sites in game and the fleets are designed with multiboxers in mind. This does need to stop and the game should function as a deterrent to multiboxers.
Example: Letting pilots access storage in structures without docking. I know a guy who wanted to control a massive amount of venture miners all moving from the belt to the structure using macro commands simply because CCP allowed this. This person was going to use virtual machines and alphas btw. How much easier can it be for cheaters? CCPlease. Stop setting everyone up for free Omega accounts. Ive got over 30 Omega accounts when I actually play (3 toons each) and its simply limited to the power of your computer to handle it.
IMO the only reason this LSI/Extractor system was created was to increase the value of CCP before it was sold to PA based on fake Omega and Alpha accounts. Same reason you all do 7 free days every quarter if you log in the NES and claim it. (<<<imma get banned for saying that fact) This allows you all to say that all these fake accounts are active. They arent. At some points im running 900 fkn research lines. WTF CCP. A trillion in value for 900 fake account research lines? IS this really what you wanted?
I know I drifted from the OPs point… but im adding to it. Enough of this cancer. No one can compete with me unless they want to be doing exactly what im doing. Its disgusting. The amount of wealth and power that MBs like myself have held is fkn disturbing when you consider that this game should be about single players having a chance to compete. Also, your choice to allow people to write programs pulling info from the server? FKN EVE SUICIDE and you dont even KNOW! … plus im not telling.
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Well the OP is about multiplayer sites that ‘promote cooperation’, so needing multiple ships to attempt something is baked in. Unless your point is that there should be more solo content?
This is a different point, really. It’s irrelevant whether one guy paying for 6 accounts consumes the site, or 6 guys in a corp from an earlier time zone than you. Your actual point here and most of the other “home content” points is that some people can clear sites earlier in the day than other people, leaving nothing for later players.
Again, whether this is a multiboxer, or a group of guys who game earlier in the day, the result is the same. This is more a case of sites not respawning in a timely manner, than one of “multiboxers exclusively lock other players out of reward sites”.
I generally see quite a few Homefront sites on the scanner, but that may be because if I log in at all, it tends to be earlier in EVE day. This is still a “site respawn” problem more than it is a multiboxer problem. Or possibly a “you need to take your newbies farther off the track than within 6 jumps of starter/hub systems” issue.
It’s also a problem, that’s been pointed out forever, that EVE forces brand new players to compete with 10-year-plus vets everywhere, right from the first day. Hell, even in starter/career systems you see vets controlling trade, mining, and sites. The issue isn’t whether those new guys are competing with multiboxers or not, it’s whether they’re competing with optimized vets in every facet of the game.
It’s not, But I am really getting tired explaining it over and over again. It’s most basic math/statistic (aka probability of such a fleet of x different players really happening). It’s the same like in the multiboxganking discussion.
If you don’t even get that simple point, I really see no reason to further argue with you, because it’s simply a waste of time.
They aren’t.
Well, you’d probably be less tired if you didn’t waste everyone’s time ‘explaining’ things that I’d already covered. In the post you’d already replied to:
And as I explained in that post, you’ve got it backwards. It isn’t a case of “normal players can’t access the content because multiboxers steal it all”. It’s the case that ‘normal players’ can’t get a group together to even run the content in the first place. And that’s why they multibox.
CCP realized long ago they had no clue how to appeal to a wider audience, so they specifically went ‘vertical’ and decided to pump their very small playerbase for maximum income. That’s why they’ve literally designed the content to encourage players who want the rewards to multibox.
If content has to wait until someone puts an actual team of separate people together for it, most of that group content would never even get run. Your own position boils down to “I want the content available for me at my convenience, and I’d rather see the sites be wasted than allow a multiboxer to run them.”
Which also boils down to “I’d rather see EVE shut down than allow multiboxers to run content I want for myself”, because without multiboxers there is no EVE. CCP is no longer financially viable without them.
That was a bad decision for CCP to make (to go narrow and deep on a smaller playerbase) but it’s the one we’re stuck with. Your sense of entitlement that somehow you deserve more access to content than a guy who’s paying for 5-10 accounts notwithstanding.
Multiboxing is here to stay, there’s no point railing against it. Here are some approaches you could ask for that make more sense and wouldn’t lead to CCP shutdown:
- Better respawning mechanics for sites so they are available throughout the day
- Better separation of vets and newer players for access to sites and rewards
- Better ways to form a group and travel to group content so people aren’t wasting an hour just trying to put a group together
I’m not keen on multiboxing either, but it’s a necessity now. We need systems that offer something to the boxers as well as the ‘real’ groups or EVE will decline even faster than it already is.
PS: You might want to dial back the “if you don’t get that simple point/waste of time” attitude a bit, especially since I’d already explained the same point better in a post you’d read and replied to. Trying to belittle someone else’s understanding while displaying your own lack of it is never a good look.
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EVE may be a lost cause at this point in terms of remedying anything. Players have so much invested on either side of any issue that it’s next to impossible to change anything without huge opposition. Case in-point, Equinox. Love it or hate it, it’s been fairly divisive amongst the playerbase for s wide variety of reasons.
Sry, we are simply on completely different boats.
I know multiboxers and I know why they do it. Its not because “they can’t find content” or “it’s so difficult to get a group together”. No. They are greedy thats all. The 200, 300, 400 million ISK/hr they could make with existing solo content simply isn’t enough for them. They want to run content that was made for groups sharing the profit, but instead of sharing they want all the profit for themselves.
Those same people who right now run Homefronts in 5 Augorors or 5 Ospreys would never ruin them if they had to share the profits. They don’t multibox because they want to do this content but can’t find people to do so. They do it because it’s convenient and good money for little effort, but only if they keep all the rewards exclusively for themselves.
Sorry, this “in EVE it is so complicated to get things done” is a lie, a myth, and everyone who played the game before 2010 knows that. Because back then this (mass)multiboxing was an exceptionally rare thing. It had no influence on the game whatsoever and all kinds of groups got things done. They built huge empires out of cooperation.
I don’t believe for a second that multiboxers should get rewarded in any way shape or form. It’s an addiction. An addiction to personal greed and slowly but steadily it will bring this game down to it’s knees. Not today, not tomorrow, but it is getting worse, year by year. It reduces the attractivity as a product on the gaming market. And I am explicitly not talking about a second convenience account to have your own scout or hauler that can do stuff meanwhile you are doing something lse on your main. I am talking about mass multiboxing exclusively (for me, everything above 3 accounts). Yes, it’s here to stay, unfortunately. But it will be one of EVEs coffin nails at some day.
Not everyone is multiboxing 30 accounts. Some, like myself, use multiboxing primarily for real time scouting. Imagine the hassle of having to log out one account, log in another, do the scouting, log that account, log back in the original…and so on. Being able to multibox at least 2 accounts is essential for real time scouting without that hassle.
People make way too much of a disproportionate fuss over the 30 character multiboxers and forget that most people are multiboxing 2 or 3 accounts.
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