One of the biggest challenges in EVE Online’s current group site system is the rampant abuse of multiboxing. The way sites are designed today unintentionally promotes selfish behavior, where players running multiple accounts dominate content meant for group cooperation.
Why Multiboxing Thrives:
Static Reward Distribution: Rewards are based on who is physically present in the site, regardless of their level of contribution or engagement. This allows multiboxers to run sites entirely solo using multiple accounts.
Minimal Interaction Requirements: Many sites require little active attention per character, making it easy for one player to manage numerous accounts simultaneously.
No Incentive for Cooperation: The current system does not reward collaboration, encouraging players to maximize rewards for themselves by excluding others.
The Result:
Site Hoarding:
Multiboxers solo group sites, such as those designed for 5 or 10 players, filling all slots with their own accounts.
Instead of sharing rewards, they monopolize LP, ISK, and loot for themselves.
Frustrated Players:
Players who are excluded from these sites are left with limited options:
Awoxing: Attacking or sabotaging the multiboxers to claim rewards.
Seagulling: Sniping rewards at the last moment without contributing.
Abandoning Group Content: Many simply give up on group sites altogether.
Toxic Gameplay Environment:
The lack of inclusivity and the dominance of multiboxers create a hostile and frustrating experience for the wider player base.
The Solution: Revamped Site Mechanics
To address these issues, we propose reworking site mechanics to focus on player engagement and active participation. By introducing hacking challenges and combat waves, the new system discourages excessive multiboxing while promoting teamwork and fairness.
New Site Design: Hacking and Combat Hybrid
Core Mechanics
Player-Driven Hacking Challenges:
No Modules Required: Hacking does not require specialized modules or character skills. Any ship can participate without sacrificing combat capability.
Skill-Based Mini-Games: Players engage in randomized hacking mini-games that require logic, timing, and quick thinking.
Competitive Participation: Each player solves as many puzzles as possible within a set time frame, earning a proportional share of the site’s rewards.
Dynamic Challenges: Hacking puzzles are randomized to prevent predictability or automation, ensuring active participation is necessary.
Combat Waves:
Between hacking rounds, NPC rats spawn in waves. All waves must be cleared before the next set of hacking modules becomes active.
Combat difficulty scales with the size of the site, ensuring that larger fleets and cooperation are needed for more substantial rewards.
Reward Distribution:
Rewards are fixed for each site but distributed proportionally based on:
Hacking Contribution: Players earn LP and ISK based on the number of puzzles they solve.
Combat Contribution: Active engagement in clearing NPC waves is required to remain eligible for rewards.
Site Details
Small Sites:
Combat: 3 waves of 3 frigates.
Hacking: 1-minute timer for puzzles.
Reward: 40,000 LP pool split by contributions.
Medium Sites:
Combat: 3 waves of 4 destroyers.
Hacking: 2-minute timer for puzzles.
Reward: 75,000 LP pool.
Large Sites:
Combat: 5 waves of 5 cruisers.
Hacking: 2.5-minute timer for puzzles.
Reward: 100,000 LP pool.
Open Sites:
Combat: 7 waves of 5 battlecruisers.
Hacking: 1-minute timer for puzzles.
Reward: 120,000 LP pool.
Special Operations: Rorqual Hacking Heist
Objective: Hack the Rorqual’s systems by solving 100 randomized puzzles collaboratively.
Mechanics:
The more puzzles a player solves, the larger their share of the LP reward.
No modules or skills required—purely player-driven.
Reward: LP pool distributed based on individual puzzle contributions.
Why This Works
Reduces Multiboxing Efficiency:
Active hacking and combat requirements make it inefficient to run more than 1-2 accounts simultaneously.
Idling or botting accounts cannot participate in randomized, time-sensitive puzzles.
Promotes Fairness and Cooperation:
Rewards are based on player input and contribution, not the number of accounts present.
Players benefit from working together to clear combat waves and complete hacking challenges efficiently.
No Skill or Module Barriers:
Hacking does not require specialized modules or in-game skills, allowing all players to participate equally.
PvP-capable ships can fully engage without compromising their loadouts.
Engaging and Fresh Gameplay:
Randomized puzzles and dynamic combat keep sites exciting and prevent repetitive gameplay.
Player skill, rather than account quantity, determines success.
Conclusion
The current system inadvertently rewards selfish behavior and multiboxing, creating a toxic and exclusionary environment. This proposal seeks to address these issues by introducing mechanics that prioritize player skill, engagement, and collaboration.
By making sites more interactive and rewarding active participation, we can create a fairer and more enjoyable experience for everyone in New Eden.
We look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas to refine this proposal further!
"While I understand captchas aren’t everyone’s idea of ‘enjoyable gameplay,’ neither is being awoxed or completely locked out of content due to selfish behaviors like site hoarding and multiboxing abuse. The current system actively promotes these negative interactions, forcing many players out of the game loop altogether.
This proposal isn’t about adding tedium; it’s about creating a fair and engaging system that rewards player skill and cooperation while discouraging excessive multiboxing. The hacking mini-games are designed to be dynamic and skill-based, not repetitive or frustrating like traditional captchas. They ensure everyone has a chance to participate, and those who actively engage will be rewarded for their effort.
A bonus of this approach is that it keeps players engaged and active in the site. With puzzles requiring focus and combat waves demanding attention, players will no longer be idling or botting their way through content. This also promotes hunting again, as active, engaged players become prime targets in space, creating more opportunities for PvP interaction.
The alternative is to leave things as they are: multiboxers monopolizing sites, and everyone else being pushed into awoxing, seagulling, or just giving up on group content entirely. That’s not enjoyable gameplay either."
This game does need more active content, I agree. Having whole “new” content type that is Insurgencies be just timer watching, and for even bigger rewards as before is horrible for the game health, while it lines pockets of people that indefinetly spin up more accounts just to bully smaller groups or single players out of the game.
This is fair, CAPTCHAs also suck (though arguably not as much as being locked out from content by awoxers, multiboxers, and bots). If they did something similar to Project Discovery or the existing relic/data hacking though where accuracy is as important as raw speed then it would provide room for different strategies and be more engaging.
@Phantom_Silver All great ideas. I hope that someone at CCP stumbles on your OP and take it to heart.
Multiboxing is also one of the reasons why EVE cannot retain new players and any mechanics that make it harder or impossible to multibox will take the game in a good direction.
Just make a character in the opposing faction and shoot the other guys in teh face…
Create a group of like minded individuals…voila problems fix themselves…
But alas, prolly too lazy for all that…easier to be a dumb carebear and lobby CCP for detriemental game mechacics.
While it’s easy to suggest that everyone just ‘make another account’ or form a group to fight back, the reality for most players is far different. The average player doesn’t have the time or resources to manage multiple accounts or grind endlessly due to real-life commitments like work, family, and other obligations. It’s unrealistic to expect casual players to match the output of those who have entire days to dedicate to the game.
Meanwhile, multiboxers often operate in corporations consisting of hundreds of accounts spread across a few real players. These setups, particularly drone bunny fleets, create an overwhelming force that even 20 normal players, no matter how coordinated, simply cannot defeat. This disparity turns group content into something dominated by a few multiboxers, locking out everyone else.
The current mechanics actively promote this behavior, making it almost impossible for average players to compete fairly. The proposed system seeks to address this imbalance by rewarding active, individual participation and collaboration, rather than sheer account numbers. This way, smaller groups and casual players have a genuine chance to enjoy the content and participate meaningfully.
I agree with most of your ideas, the current (mass)multiboxing of group content simply has to end. It scales too well, with barely any risk involved and concentrates ISK/LP and other rewards in the already full wallets of rich vets, while real groups of players either completely abandon that content or struggle to compete.
Important and easy fixes that are long overdue would be:
Balance Drone Multibox Power:
reduce drone assist to 5 ships (and evaluate if that is enough, maybe it should even be removed completely)
all PvE content should contain some special-AI NPCs that go mad on drones, like in the Abyss waves (Angels) or the Crimson Harvest event. And no, before anyone begins to cry, I tested Crimson Sites in Gilas, Rattles, Ishtars - they are absolutely doable in Droneboats, you simply have to be quick pulling them back in and not letting them attack targets that are too far off as long as webbing-NPCs are present.
Re-design certain combat sites:
high-level content should always have multiple areas, that forces drone-assist to be renewed in each area, not hurting real players, but burdening effort on multiboxers, separated by initially locked gates that are secured by
hacking locks, that not always are located right at the gate but at some remote control station, so it is benefitial to have some kind of ship diversity in the group, like one guy in an Assaultfrig or Cynabal to get to certain points of interest quickly. Multiboxers who often fly x times the same ship on multiple chars, especially just drone-slaves or missilespammers, should be at a disadvantage.
requiring an item that has to be found in the area (in static containers, non tractorable, so one player of the group has to actually move there and get it), again rewarding specialized roles within the group
group-triggers that would have to be activated simultaneously by multiple players being far away from each other (for example 3 differnent hacking locks that would have to be completed within a 30second time frame, multiple trigger structures that have to be destroyed/defended at the same time, so the group has to split up and fight at different locations at the same time)
change the site spawn mechanic, if a site is finished, it doesn’t respawn in the same system but in a random system nearby. So the rattingfleet has to move and could be ambushed while doing so. A real group can much easier react or fight when being agressed than a multiboxer can.
Update NPC-AI:
less direct approach where they are simply massacred, at least elite-NPCs should try to come in at an angle and slowly reduce their orbit to always keep some transversal. Rewards fleets that bring application-support as special role over those who just bring x+1 damagedealers
faster base speed of elite NPCs (most are way too slow for their class) to reward bringing special roles like Webbing/Painting ships
certain high-reward NPCs try to escape (burn away, warp out, MJD) if not tackled properly. Some require more than 1 tackler to hold them. See: Drifters in WH escalations. Again rewards active group play with defined roles over just bringing an identical massmultiboxed fleet.
All existing NPC content should be updated slowly but steadily along those lines, just leaving the very beginner content simple and unchallenging.
Every time they try to create content meant to be run by a group working together, people just figure out a way to run it solo. If they make it too hard for one ship to do alone, people just multibox it and still run it solo.
Not a fan of puzzles, captchas or mini-games like hacking and being forced to do them over and over would drive me straight out of FW. I think a better way would be to have separate zones for each multi-pilot plex that have to have their own objectives completed at the same time, not one by one by a single person. If it’s an ADV-5 plex, then 5 objectives should have to be completed within a couple of minutes of each other or the whole thing resets. Be much harder to multibox that.
And while we’re at it, they need to make the NPCs a real threat so that real attention has to be paid to them, because right now they hit like a wet noodle. I can sit perfectly still in a Large plex with a thrasher and an NPC battlecruiser can’t even break the passive shield regen while I pelt it with small arty. It’s no wonder people just bring in an Algos, put out drones and go watch Netflix.
You’re absolutely right that anything that can be done by the ship itself, without active player input, will just be multiboxed to oblivion. That’s why the proposal focuses on removing ship-based mechanics like sitting in a plex and instead implementing mini-games or other tasks that require direct player interaction. These puzzles aren’t just fillers—they actively involve players, making it impossible to idle through content with drones or passive setups.
Yes, this might drive some players away, but it will open doors for many more. By creating content that prioritizes skill and active engagement, we make sites more accessible and enjoyable for casual players and small groups who are currently locked out by multiboxing fleets.
At the end of the day, you can’t please everyone, but the current system already excludes a huge portion of the player base. This change aims to balance the scales and create opportunities for more meaningful and rewarding gameplay.
I understand that, but it is one way of forcing activity that cannot be done simultaneously on many accounts.
Any “shooting” events can still be multiboxed, as long as each separate place can be done by a single ship. I mean, you can always use a 5 droneboats and warp them into the 5 different locations, then let the drones work on the NPCs in 5 different windows. So it would have to be a bit more complex than that.
If you want to have mechanics against (mass)multiboxing there is simply no other way than to force multiple actions, fast decision making and different roles for the fleet members that have to work together under time pressure.
Seems to me people are trying to have it both ways. The OP claims there is ‘no incentive for collaboration’…yet surely what you describe is the incentive for collaboration.
What’s more, why should 1 person against a collaborative group of 20 be any more ‘fair’ than 1 person against a 20 ship multiboxer ?
Whenever I see threads against multiboxing, all I really see is ’ wah wah…someone can afford more accounts than I can '…all wrapped up in a disingenuous attempt to portray multiboxing as somehow ‘harmful’.
