You forgot something there
I don’t know; you’ll have to tell me. Cowardly throwaway alt forum-posting isn’t within my domain, sorry!
Ya, he did. He does that when he’s very angry.
Well that’s a lie. It’s one of your specialties.
Mr Epeen 
lolz!
We’ve been having this debate since EvE’s inception. Only EvE dying is slightly older…
–Gadget Farms remembers
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As long as you are consistent and not simply posing as an independent character to try to bolster ‘you’…why would it even matter.
Ego. When I post, I want people to know it’s me. Check the name of my corp next time you log in.
Even when Barstorlode (and Falcon back in the day) used to ban me every few weeks, everyone knew that Foggy Bernstein was me. Because I made sure they did.
Mr Epeen
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I notice you didn’t ask for feedback directly in this topic and I am probably wasting our time, but none the less I suppose I’ll offer some.
I dislike multiboxing. When I played and ran a corporation, multiboxing was banned and I made sure everyone knew this before I’d allow them to join. I did not restrict people from playing with or working with people who multibox, except that the ‘people’ could not be their own alts, or alts of someone else in the corporation.
The reason I did this was to give people a reason to seek help from each other and to give players who have little experience or resources a relatively equal shot at being of use to other members of the corporation. The success of my policy was only mildly effective as I could never get many people to sign up for it, but I think we had a good time and the members of the corporation were fairly comfortable with each other. It was a small but pleasant atmosphere and if there’s anything I miss about Eve, it would be those people.
That said, I recognize multiboxing (or not) as a preference, not a problem. I had a long debate with a pilot named Shipwreck Jones where I realized I just wanted things to be done a certain way and the benefits of enforcing a single account for everyone are not quite as universal as I had thought and that forcing my style preferences on other people would probably not be a good thing.
I don’t think they discuss multiboxing much because it’s ingrained in Eve and the source of additional revenue, and because it would be very difficult to prevent even if they were so inclined. Relatively few people do it, according to the survey I had seen, too.
I was able to play the way I wanted to, and have a corporation that played the way I wanted it to, and give others a chance to play with others who don’t multibox if they wanted to. It was harder to get by that way, but also I think it felt more rewarding and other people multiboxing didn’t infringe on that feeling of achievement, but only added to it. Having the freedom to make a group and play the way I wanted to, I think it only fair that I be gracious enough to accept that other people want different things and not fight to remove their preferences from the game to suit my taste.
I think people tend to see multiboxing solely in terms of people forming blob fleets for extra DPS. I’ve never yet used multiboxing for that purpose. For me its useful for real time scouting, and I’ve also used it where one char is shooting at a station and the other char is trying to bump a loot thief away from the station. In due course I may do multibox DPS fleet, but in the mean time having a real time scout is very useful and I always use one whenever my main char goes into lowsec, for example. In fact having the scout is precisely why I started doing more stuff in lowsec.
Why should the survey ask the community about multiboxing ?
Did it ask anything about e.g., the Photon UI, or Ore Redistribution, the ingame economy, the changes to the blueprints, or (everyone’s favorite topic) ganking in hisec ? No ? It wouldn’t surprise me.
I don’t get these surveys anymore, and that is NOT a complaint.
I’m surprised you’d reply to one of my posts given my lack of killboard, however if you’re insinuating I’m only talking about blob fleets (either combat or mining), you’d be mistaken.
Even for scouting purposes and in lowsec, we had to rely on another real person to do the job. I was the person in charge, but I was not an exception. My freighters were scouted through lowsec by another real person. My jump freighter cynos had to be lit by another real person. I had to trust and coordinate with someone to get things done.
There are no kills on my character in my freighter or jump freighter, so this did work for me. Having to put this extra effort in and having to trust someone is what made the corporation close, though it does come at the cost of not being able to be self sufficient and do whatever you want whenever you want however you want.
People felt like they mattered because they were needed for and trusted to do these tasks that carried very real risk for the person lending that trust. I don’t think it’s an unfair criticism to call what I did unwise in so far as practical matters or the bottom line of an isk ledger are concerned, but I didn’t do it to be practical. I did it to bring people together as a team and teach them to rely on each other. It worked. Everyone knew that every other person in the corporation would have their back and I found being in that corporation a very comfortable place with high quality people.
As an aside, it is also why friendly fire was always legal in my corporation. Leaving it enabled sets a higher standard for who get admitted into the corporation and their willingness to trust. People who are afraid of being shot by members of my corporation did not belong in it, and if we were afraid of being shot in the back by someone, we had no business inviting them to it.
The problem is that if you’re doing this while nobody else is, you’re needlessly handicapping yourself into a sub-competitive state.
Multi-boxing is absolutely dogshit game design, and should never have happened. But now it’s so wholly integrated into the game, that it’s impossible to play with any degree of effectiveness without engaging in it.
Having two or three active alts used to be outlier cases. Players who had like three barges mining at the same time were rare. Now it’s normal to see players log in a dozen Mackinaws into an ice belt or a dozen Leshaks to shoot structures or whatever. This isn’t normal.
It’s one of the reasons why EVE will ultimately not be a “forever” game. It’s simply not sustainable for the average player. Every time CCP needs more money, they’ll always opt to barf up some kind of new alt account offer instead of making compelling additions to the game that provide its players with value. It’s simply cheaper and easier for them to do this. It’s a self-fueling cycle, as more and more players get more alts, fewer and fewer players get into the game because they’re unable to compete, which forces CCP to sell more and more alts to their shrinking unique player base. They basically found a life hack for maintaining their profit levels while slowly bleeding their main product of its soul, and now they’re holding on for dear life because their bus is going to explode if it goes any slower than 50 miles per hour, and they have no idea how to get off.
It’s a stain on EVE’s history and legacy.
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I don’t really disagree with any of this as far as personal opinion goes, but I stop short of saying multiboxing is objectively bad game design. I don’t think a niche game that a few people really like is a bad game, and I can’t definitively say that can’t be the case with Eve’s current design. I can only definitively say that I am not included in that target niche anymore.
EVE didn’t come out the gate this way, though. Alts always existed, but the whole 20-character farming stuff didn’t come about until the second decade era began.
Also, if it’s not objectively bad game design, name just one other game that does this.
Some people exist who claim to like it the way it is, and since they do and I can’t prove otherwise I have to let it be as something that’s my preference vs. theirs. I couldn’t name another game like Eve was at all. If there had been, I could have migrated to that instead when Eve changed to the degree that I no longer enjoyed it.
I’m not going to put a whole lot of effort into the defense of the practice. I tolerate it as a preference some people have that I don’t. I would need a more solid footing than I have at present to assert it was objectively bad for all people.
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“Preference” only makes sense when it’s not mutually exclusive. If we go to a restaurant, and you order your steak medium-rare while I order mine well-done and then pour ketchup on it, there’s no friction or conflict of interest. We both get the thing we want and are happy.
In EVE, if the players who “like” multi-boxing get what they want, they create a new baseline for efficiency that caters specifically to them. Players who don’t like multi-boxing are therefore forced either to multi-box themselves in order to stay competitive, or to hamstring themselves with a handicap against people who are able/willing to meta-game the game’s monetization system to create an advantage for themselves that’s not available to anyone by virtue of EVE’s gameplay alone.
It’s kind of like using steroids in sports. Making the case that people should be allowed to use steroids “if they like it” makes absolutely no sense when you consider the effect of such a preference on the ecosystem.
No, if you go back and read over what I said, this is my opinion about PvP and multiboxing. I am not talking about mining, crafting, etc… Multiboxing PvP is like having a football game between 2 teams one is made up of 11 players and the other is just the goalkeeper. Sadly the developers decided it would be fun or just funny to see the common solo player get massacred by the multiboxer. As stated, since multiboxing is legit in Eve, the discussion really doesn’t matter.
Now a survey is an opinion poll, I gave my opinion, as did others like Rail J’kar and you chopped his comment out of context and attempt to shut others down expressing their points of view. I think you should reflect on what it is you feel and why you desire all who don’t share your thoughts, not to have their own thoughts.
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Do what many of us have, block her because otherwise she’ll just rattle on and on and argue black is white etc.
remember, the survey is just to serve the whims of CCP’s latest marketing spiel. period.
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EQ, EQ2, WoW,…
Multiboxing wasn’t part of the intentional game design - like living in wormholes, players saw that they could do it, so did. My friends have been multi-boxing in EQ since 99, when Multi Boxing literally meant having Multiple Computers.
–Gadget can tell you the benefits of a pocket healer…
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