Who else does he remind you of ?
It’s not removing it, just that running a simple timer alone wouldnt be enough to capture a site anymore.
Multiboxers could still run the timer in say the first room, and then 2 seperate rooms (both accessible from the initial warpin) needed to be hacked or capped or with a specific objective, to seal the capture.
Any idea to complexify the interaction for multiboxers (current interaction is literally « staring at a wall » level of complexity…) and to open new doors of tempo and opportunity for hunters.
Basically, ideas along those lines, to divide their workflow and keep them « busier » on more than just one front, making them more vulnerable, and hence more susceptible to collaborative efforts against them …
(right Gloria ?)
Lol…that is hilarious coming from someone with zero evidence they have ever undocked in their entire 15 years in Eve.
So…you guys are quite capable of getting together 362 people when it comes to whoring on a station kill, but you can’t get a single person to ‘collaborate’ on a FW site.
I made this point multiple times and got nothing but ad hominem and ’ I refuse to discuss further’. Which makes it clear some were never really here to discuss in the first place.
Why should you be able to analyze boxes w/o an analyzer? Every ship can fit one. If you run the epic arcs, you’ll find yourself sooner or later using a frigate or corvette to hack a box because it’s more manouverable then your marauder and you don’t need to … or don’t want to fight the NPCs (standing loss with hostile factions and stuff).
Multiple waves of NPCs protecting hacking sites, which get harder each wave, and are easily able to saturate a fleet, are present in wormhole space data and relic sites.
Every data and relic site cleans faster the more players you bring, as multiple players can hack multiple boxes concurently. Some sites impose time limites, basically enabling multiplayer fleets to take out more loot then single player or multiboxed fleets. Here’s a flashy animation from CCP introducing Covert Research Facilities, i.e. hacking sites you have 60 seconds time to complete before diamond NPCs come to spoil your fun
Those sites are data signatures that spawn all over new eden and have the difficulty that is average in their security zone - i.e. highsec box has 50, low has 70 and null has 90 difficulty.
Failing a hack, including aborting a hack - e.g. by closing the hacking window, manouvering your ship out of data analyzer range while hacking, or by attempting to cloak, will have the box explode and blow up everything on grid. Once the diamonds land, the they will tackle players on grid, and shoot the boxes, which causes every so far unhacked box to explode, most likely wrecking the players if there are many unhacked boxes left.
So… you can hack and loot everything you want but after 60 seconds you’re either done, or dead (unless your t3c is sufficiently blingy or you brought a nestor). Of cause, with more players, you can concurrently hack more boxes, enabling you to get a larger portion of the site content. As the site contains 5 boxes, the best way to run the site is to bring 5 players and have each player hack one box, then warp off. As CCP’s animation proposes, the site contains rare loot that explorers only running regular sites might never have seen before
The last room of the Superior Sleeper Site
works fairly much alike: It has damage causing pulses, which start weakly, but each pulse gets stronger. A blinged up Tengu with High Crystal implant set and strong drugs can remain there for a bit more then 2 minutes before the pulses are so strong it breaks the tank, forcing the t3c to leave, which will not cause the pulses to fade. Again, multiple players with blingy t3c - or stratios if you’re less ambitious - means multiple boxes can be hacked concurrently while the pulses are bearable, scaling the loot value pretty well with the number of players you bring, since there’s like 20 boxes or so in that room and rather little time.
It’s very rare to see players run the site, actually. Normally the Signature just despawns w/o anyone having attempted to run it. With a Heron or similar kitchensink exploration ships, you can clear the first 3 rooms which drop about 100m~200m isk in less then half an hour. A blinged Tengu can solo all rooms in 40 minutes, but for each bling t3c more you bring. you get another ~200m isk out of the last room.
You can clear the first 3 rooms with your heron, then reship to your cruiser and come back with your buddies to run the last 2 rooms in 10 minutes, if you want, too. This is actually quite handy because most of the times, hacking the superior sleeper is better income then whatever the other players had been doing, but they will likely need to prepare, i.e. come back to your staging area and reship, which takes them time… in which you clear the first rooms.
Frentix Distribution … is a lowsec “gas site” that has 30m isk worth of guarding DED NPCs and spawns more as you hack the boxes. As it’s only DED NPCs and the site is ungated, a marauder fleetmate (well, since it’s DED content, you ishtar alt is good enough in fact) can clean up the NPCs and the spawning waves, too. It drops a 40m isk implant, some BPCs and reaction formulas, and players actually run this one, because it’s the only way to get the stuff required for frentix booster production.
There’s more of these. Actually, there’s a lot more.
But it’s not what (the majority of) players care about. What they care about is putting their ishtar on orbit around their MTU, about autotargetting missile golem running level 4 mission DEDs, and about distribution mission autopiloting. Ah, and watching a retriever cycling it’s drills for half an hour before it filled with ore they don’t even want to use, of cause. All these activities enable the player to either relax with eve muted and alt-tabbed out to not interfere with netflix, or to alt-tab into other eve client instances to repeat the same procedure 20 times (or more).
Thats what I mean with “greed”. They want to have the profits, but don’t want to have any effort. They don’t care about enjoyment, challenges to overcome, good teamwork being rewarded etc. pp., interesting riddles to solve or personal skill being important. They want the game to be as boring and dull as possible to they can ramp up their profits by just bringing more ships (which then can easily pay for themselves). And tbh, they show the same attitude for PvP as well, wishing for simple concepts so they can multibox 10 catalysts to blow up others, 10 Leshaks to grind stations, 10 EoS to attack smaller groups… Nothing of this should be even possible to manage in a well designed game.
All the people against changes as proposed in topics like this ultimately fall back to a personal level: “It’s all about envy!” “You can’t have it that someone can afford xy accounts!” etc. but thats of course nonsense. Many many people who could easily afford a 20 omegas begin to realize that the current design is bad for the game. It has nothing to do with envy, but everything with wanting a well-designed, interesting, challenging, skill-rewarding and cooperation-scaling gaming environment to explore, engage and oververcome. Where actually learning how to get better (personally) and forming relationship (socially) matters more than throwing ISK or dollars at a “problem”.
Just think about the most successful online games of all time, that brought huge amounts of fun to the players (and that really is what games should do):
Given unlimited hardware capacitiy…
Super Mario - could you multibox it on 3, 5, 10 consoles at once?
Call of Duty - could you multibox it on multiple platforms and win games?
Diablo™/PoE - could you run multiple instances effectively?
Starcraft/Warcraft - could you run multiple instances simultaneously and outperform others?
XWing/TieFighter/Privateer/Freelancer: Would flying multiple ships on multiple accounts do you good?
Witcher III/GodofWar/Horizon/Souls?
Doom? Neverwinter? Skyrim? AgeOfEmpires?
We can prolong this list to eternity. The scheme stays the same: Good games are designed in a way to keep a player busy, challenged, entertained, but rewarded for skill or cooperation (in multiplayer sessions).
Now list 5 extremely successful games (comparable in success to the ones mentioned) that profit from mass-multiboxing in a way EVE does, like running 5, 10, 15 clients at once, all joining the same game/team. Good luck.
This alone is a clear indicator that one of the reasons (I don’t say “the main reason”) that EVE will always be small, always struggeling to get and keep players is the fact that most of it’s content is so dull, easy and boring that it is just not interesting to play for many people (and will lead to multiboxing inevitably). And that has nothing to do that EVE is a SciFi-Spaceship game or being PvP-heavy, people literally beg for a good SciFi game for ages, see why they pump millions of donations into projects like Star Citizen even without a playable content.
No. Changing the content towards a design that is actually better for the players, for the health of the game and - in the long run, surely for CCP - is one good way to stop this spiral of stagnating login-numbers while seeing more and more multiboxing (which means the total number of “real players” actually is going down, slowly but steadily). That this can have no good end, should be obvious for everyone.
Thank you for pointing that out, Kezrai. You’re correct that in the original post, we didn’t explicitly state that this is about Faction Warfare, particularly regarding Pirate sites (both defending and attacking). While we did mention LP and some of the mechanics tied to these sites, it seems the focus on Faction Warfare wasn’t made as clear as it should have been. That’s on me, and I’ll make sure to update the original post to better reflect this focus.
The core of the proposal remains the same: to make these sites more dynamic and engaging while ensuring that they are accessible for players of all levels—whether they’re solo, in small gangs, or part of larger groups. The intent is to add mechanics that promote skill-based and interactive gameplay, such as hacking mini-games or active challenges, to shift the focus away from sheer account numbers dominating the sites.
Thank you for pointing out this oversight—I appreciate the constructive feedback, and I’ll edit the original post to ensure the focus is clearer for anyone reading.
- Because no fleet large enough and looking for content sticks around to chase someone who’s only here to pile up inside a system and farm it to death and to deter solo or small 2-3 pilot gangs (awoxing included) from competing with him. So the minute the fleet leaves, they’re back at it. It literally made zero difference on the long run.
A proposal for this was:
-To redesign sites so as mutliboxers cant pile up on a single spot inside and have to divide their fleet in separate rooms, making them more vulnerable to hunting fleets, small gangs or expert solo players.
- The max a multiboxer can camp at a time is 2-3 sites and dividing his fleet, making him vulnerable, so the moment trouble comes in, he immediately piles up in a single one, or warps off entirely from all sites until fleet goes away, or moves on to another system to do the same.
Proposal for this:
Like the above, a fleet would stay committed to a single site in order to capture it, and fleet divided into separate rooms inside the site, giving more incentive for hunters.
Pirate sites have warp scrambling frigate NPCs for instance, which could be used here. Introducing a hacking game was proposed also with the OP.
Overall, the idea is to make farming small/medium/large sites less efficient and more hands-on as a solo multiboxer, and to giving a tempo advantage back to real and coordinated small gangs / fleets.
(Novice sites should remain as they are imo, as they’re not really of much interest to multiboxers due to lower rewards (they tend to pile up in small and mediums most of the time), and novices are great spots for straight frig pvp.)
You mean, as opposed to not moving, letting your Algos drones do the work and staring down a single timer is on your list of “enjoyable” gameplay ?
Or do you mean, having to drag you out from the enjoyable / tabbed out Netflix gameplay ? …
… lmao …
CCP programmers / designers are and always have been, the laziest bunch of the entire gaming industry.
Great ideas, but shitty execution/interaction/result.
Trig invasions were a perfect example of an amazing idea with so much potential, but cut short by laziness and lack of continued creativity.
Ultimately, we can still try help to change things, but, it’s been ages already.
Either is better than Captchas. If you don’t like Algos Multiboxers, simply increase NPC aggro on drones from drone focused ships (leave drones from gunnery/missile ships alone) and this fixes itself.
That’s a good idea, but it doesn’t bog down to just Algoses Im affraid.
As for captchas, anything goes to complexify the capturing task a little for the MB crowd, while offering tempo/content for others.
Seperate rooms to split them up inside the plex, was also an idea, requiring coordinated/manual triggering of some form …
I’m curious as to how you know people are multiboxing the sites. Is it people all with same name, in which case a screen print would demonstrate so, or is it in most cases an assumption based on behaviour or whatever.
Why wouldn’t a multiboxer be able to split up his fleet?
If you’re thinking about level X missions and acceleration gates (given your “algos” comment, real multiboxers use ishtars and dominixes), missioning content, combat signature DED sites, escallation sites, and similar content, that content is unpopular among multiboxers, anyways.
Instead, they go to nullsec where level 4/5 combat anomalies will spawn one bunch of NPCs after the other on the same grid the others were just wrecked, the newly spawned NPCs will autoaggress on the player and move towards it, at zero transversal and without prop mods of cause. We call the Ishtar the Deploy-and-Forget ship because that is literally how ishtars are used in nullsec: warp in, deploy drones, drop MTU, put Ishtar on orbit of the MTU, engage your tank and prop mod, bookmark the MTU and alt tab to do something else for half an hour or so before checking the client again to either realize it can be alt tabbed off for another half an hour, or to warp it to the next anomaly and repeat the procedure there. Only when you have no more MTUs in the cargohold the incredibly complex task of reshipping to a hauler and collecting your MTUs and their content needs to be addressed.
Unlike in highsec, SOV null systems respawn every anomaly in the same system within 20 minutes, and the maximum number of anomalies scales with the amount of crabbing in the system, so you normally have enough anomalies in your system and don’t ever have to relocate your Ishtars to other solar systems, allowing a multiboxer to redeploy-and-reforget his ishtar fleet with very little effort, before being able to go completely afk again for another half an hour.
Because a deploy-and-forget boat’s drones only aggress on NPCs that aggress on the droneboat, afk multiboxers never put multiple droneboats into an anomaly. Instead, you deploy each droneboat into its own site.
The lowsec incursion crabs multiboxing 14 dominix that drone assist their eos command ship might be annoying, but they’re really only the intro into massive multiboxing, which exists exclusively in null.
Coinincidentially, CCP wants players to move into null already, but if they do, they want players to avoid clustering in small regions of null and instead to spread out and densely populate the many nulls, supposedly to be out of their alliances’ capital umbrella, but more realistically to increase their ability to scale up with alts.
Well, I dont think they wouldn’t at all, in fact it would encourage them to, if the separate rooms require manual coordination to complete the site, dividing the fleet would be the best thing as it would give a tempo / opportunity for external coordinated forces / hunters.
Right now the design to capturing a site is literally :
Warp in, sit at beacon, shoot a single weak rat npc, and wait for timer.
That’s it …
I mean, come on … for the reward they’re getting with the LP per site … the risk is just lol
@Phantom_Silver Dont feed the troll.
It’s lame, but again, it’s nothing specific to multiboxers. Solo players, bots and farmers have been exploiting FW mechanics for years. You’re still complaining more about FW design than about multiboxers.
You’re also still stuck on “multiboxers monopolize system”, while also saying split up the fleet weakens them. So if you’re in a system with (iirc) something like 4-8 sites in it, how does that multiboxer keep you from running other sites in the system?
If you’re in FW, you’re obviously scanning for incoming bad guys, and you obviously know who these multiboxers are, so why don’t you see them incoming? How are they awoxing you any differently than a foe would?
If they just come back and do plexes after you leave, how is that different from a solo player who waits til you leave then goes back and does plexes?
If you want sites to split into multiple rooms, how are solo players supposed to do anything?
You and the OP keep trying to blame all the bad FW design on multiboxing, and if you were accurate about it I’d support that. But nothing either of you have pointed out has been specific to multiboxers, or even highly targeted to multiboxers, or even well explained, really.
And of course, no evidence or data or anything, just broad statements that “multiboxers dominate, take everything, lock players out, disappear like smoke but also kill us without consequences, pad corps” blah blah. And I’m sure some multiboxers do all that stuff… but since some of those things are contradictory and most of them have always been problems with FW, I’m not seeing the multibox-specific issues.
Again, not trying to shoot you guys down, I’d happily support ideas to fix any broken issues. Just saying that you guys need to build a stronger case than “Multiboxers really annoy me, so I’m blaming all the FW problems on them”.
Well I mean, we could sit down and gather all the hard evidence needed sure, or we could save time and let it remain something amongst people with decade-old experience in FW and related CSMs, that have “seen” and “know” about the problem, and are currently looking for design solutions.
Which I believe, was mainly what this thread was aimed at, proposing ideas and solutions.
Not a thread about people with little to no experience in the field, or too occupied with fatalism issues to offer a creative feedback.
Well, maybe solo capping sites for medium and above isn’t supposed to be soloable.
Or it would really depend on how the rooms would work tbh, to remain soloable content, but with more tedium.
And we’d need to find an inbetween for small sites somehow.
Novice sites would remain as they are.
Take Battlefields as an example, that’s definitely not soloable, yet people show up to do them all the time…
Yes, I always have been, multiboxing is the way it currently is, and is actually quite recent in its popularity and use, and the current “new” FW design was clearly not thought well around it.
By awoxing / chasing you off from other sites with his fleet until you leave the/his system ?
Until you either MB yourself and bring your own fleet, to which then he would either bail the system and/or bring his buddy with an extra fleet…
TBH, I don’t need a lot of experience in order to identify poorly thought out and poorly supported notions that try to address core issues by blaming them on someone’s pet peeve.
At any rate, both you and OP said “address monopolization, address awoxing, address stagnant warzone dynamics”. I did, and the best you can come back with is “go away your feedback isn’t relevant”.
(Although in fact the thread is about dealing with multiboxers at group content, which I have plenty of experience with, and didn’t mention FW until you and the OP decided to shift the thread focus 2/3 of the way in.)
I’ll leave you to it then, with the reminder that multiboxing is here to stay, and you’ll need better solutions than anything recommended here so far to make a dent in it. And better arguments.
Ha well ok, you’re welcome to log in and take a long trip throughout FW space for a few weeks and come back to tell us what we already knew …
Meanwhile it’s also fairly insulting to vets with years of experience, to assume we would be talking out of our butts about this …
And BTW, the topic is tagged “Faction-war, lowsec, pvp” for a reason …
Yes multiboxing is here to stay, we’ve all gathered it’s CCPs milkcow by now, the trouble is for how long, in the current design of the game, and can it sustain it ? And how can we still make it better ?
Open to ideas, not status-quo supportive criticisms, nor fatalist premises.