Except for the fact that one guy running 3 characters likely does it worse than a small gang run by individual players would.
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There is always an advantage to having more ships. In many ways, eve is a game where N+1 often wins (that is, whoever can field more ships wins).
In eve… 1 account = 1 possible ship fielded in a given engagement.
So more accounts > less accounts.
But 10 accounts with 10 pilots will generally be better than 10 accounts with 1 pilot. It will probably be better than 15 accounts with 5 pilots. Handling multiple accounts simultaneously is hard and significantly degrades your effectiveness on each account.
So while you can increase your odds in an engagement by subbing more accounts… you can increase your odds MORE by finding other players and flying with them.
Think of it as buying gold ammo (subbing other accounts)… when others can earn “diamond ammo” that is better for free (making friends). Your better than the guy who doesn’t buy gold ammo or earn diamond ammo… but that difference isn’t from “paying to win”. If’s from “paying more than the other guy when both of you are too lazy or socially inept to actually do what’s needed to win”.
What?
Would you like to tell Ferrari that?
This thread is dying. That ship is dying too.
Not to be confused with dyeing your hair blue.
There is definitely meaningful difference, maybe not at the tactical level, but definitely at a strategic level. From a logistical standpoint, it is always more likely that 1 guy is ready than that 2 guys are ready. Now, if that 1 guy has the same assets available as 2 guys, then there is more up time available. It might make more sense if I put some numbers to it:
Let’s say you need 2 ships to accomplish a task. If 1 guy has 1 ship, then you need 2 guys to accomplish a task. Also, since there are 2 guys, there are 2 sets of objectives, i.e. there is twice the workload. Maybe the first player wants to gate camp and the second player wants to mine. That’s obviously going to take longer than just gate camping or just mining. They obviously both want ISK or kills or whatever; they need twice as much.
Well, the player with 2 ships simultaneously available is always able to deploy. He has 100% uptime. The 2 players with 1 ship each are going to have scheduling mismatches. There is going to be conflicts, where one wants to mine and one wants to gate camp. Some of the time, the 2 players will not be able to cooperate to accomplish an objective. That is a loss of uptime. They do not have 100% uptime like the multiboxer.
Scale that up 10x. 10 dual boxing players are accomplishing more than 20 single box players. Go to 10,000x. 10,000 players are outputing more than 20,000 players. That could be ore, kills, ISK, or what have you.
Now, if its kills, that means that a server with dual boxers is effectively twice as dangerous as a server with only single boxing players.
That’s the simple version.
You can also start thinking about how much more efficient the dual boxer is. If the 2 guys can’t get it together 10 percent of the time, that is different than if they can’t get it together 25% of the time. How much more dangerous is a server with dual boxers that are 25% more efficient versus a server with dual boxers operating at only 10% greater efficiency? And then go ahead and contextualize things like scouting, espionage, specialization and division of labor . . .
Except that CCP, unlike the baseball leagues, allows players to pay for multiple accounts and to multibox.
So yes. It is fair
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That they allow it doesn’t make it fair. Baseball leagues and other gaming and sporting organizations disallow such things specifically because it’s unfair. Their philosophy is probably that competitive games are more entertaining to watch than uncompetitive ones. So that’s what all those rules are about, mostly. An attempt to make the games fair so that people will want to watch. You may have noticed that the Aliance Tournament (and the other one, can’t remember the name) has some similar rules. Probably because they’re meant to be entertaining to watch and watching veteran players in Marauders blapping noobs in noob ships probably wouldn’t be that entertaining to watch.
Just imagine if a particularly rich alliance could field 100 teams, and if those teams were composed of many of the same players. They could lose a match and keep right on playing until they won the tournament.
“EVE is fair.” <- why are you trying to do this?
I dont see how that follows, sorry.
the logic about 10 dual boxing players accomplishing more than 20 single box players is simply incorrect.
I can only be clicking on one client at a time. One guy wiht 20 accounts is not going to be able to work them all effectively.
If you have 20 players in system and you are the bait… if there are 19 other real players when the bait gets taken all the other 19 will warp in almost immediately, lock quickly and start applying damage. If they are all you… while you can fleet warp it’s going to take you a while to lock and start applying scrams/webs/damage from your other ships. It might even be long enough for them to kill your bait and escape because you’re fumbling through 20 clients.
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If you think one guy with multiple accounts needs the same isk as with 1 account… you don’t value your accounts properly. If I’m risking a ship… I need isk comensurate with the time and risk I’m putting in for each ship. If I’m not getting it, the other account isn’t worth it. You need the same payback or you’re doing it wrong. Why bother with 2 accounts?
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Scheduling mismatches happen… make more friends. Unlike accounts for you (which have a cost to you) making as many friends as possible has no cost. Find people who are on the same times you are and like to do the same things. There’s no expense to this.
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There is essentially a stacking penalty with accounts (just like with modules on your ship). The more you have, the less effective each account/module will be. Eventually you reach the point where additional accounts can only be used for AFK activities because your attention span can’t handle adding more accounts
So effectively. 2 guys on with 1 account = 2 man/account effectiveness. 1 guy with 2 accounts is more like 1.9
3 guys with 1 = 3, 1 guy with 3 = 2.7
4 guys with 1 = 4, 1 guy with 4 = 3.3.
5 guys with 1 = 5. 1 guy with 5 = 3.8.
And so on. You have one set of hands and one set of eyes… and one brain. YOu are completely incorrect in thinking a single player gets more benefit with more accounts than a bunch of players managing one account each.
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“Fair” is a subjective term. It differs from person to person. To me, if it’s within the rules then it is fair. I do not apply my morality to the game and expect others to adhere to it.
If you feel that you have to put yourself at a disadvantage in order to play fair, then go for it, just don’t complain to everyone else because you are hampering yourself.
And before anyone talks about spending extra cash just to have alts, the OP claims to make 20-30 bazillion isk per month because he plays all day every day. The OP could easily pled another account, so it’s not like other people are paying to get a heads up on him, he just chooses to be at a disadvantage.
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Its not Eve. I’m playing mmorpgs since 1996 and multiboxing has always been there. So get over it or play offline.
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You’ve been pretty much bang on throughout the thread but there is an exception to this,
Ice miner cycle time is long enough to allow you to scale up this far.
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Oh yeah? Well, I’ve been gaming since before I was born and for all that time there have been people whining about unfairness and whining about whining. If you don’t like to hear sissies complain about their first world problems, then close your browser window.
Good point. You can probably make more isk using 5 accounts doing some other things rather than ice mining… but I suppose it is a bit more scalable.
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Invention is scalable too, IMO, but I fail to see an issue here.
There are plenty of largely AFK things that are scalable… PI, invention, researchng BP’s, reactions, etc. But those aren’t “active gameplay” which seems to be more the point of this thread.
Anything requiring real time user input to any degree as opposed to setting and leaving a job is going to degrade the more clients you run. Stuff like invention works because you can have all 3 toons on each account doing it with only a few minutes of input every so often.
Ice mining is kind of inbetween I suppose. It’s active-ish… but due to long cycle times can be scaled up with multiple accounts to a larger degree than other active gameplay methods.
MarkeeDragon have a video where he talks about how he set up a citadel to use 40+ characters doing invention for the sole purpose of market manipulation. This affects you if your trying to do market trading, another aspect of the game where I will say you’re mostly wasting your time. Multiboxers totaly dominate that market, together with botting, and the issue has to do with ISK devaluation and a general corruption of the EVE experience.
Topic of this thread is the evil of of multiboxing, and I would say griefers use this to multiply their efforts to ruin the game experience for others to a maximum.
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This is an accepted way of playing the game, for example the stated purpose of Goons (grr™) is to ruin your game, not the game
Being able to ruin someone’s day is what Eve is built on. Deal with it, or move on.
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Link the video please. I am rather dubious about this claim.