The main problem with alts are that they bypass or minimize the social aspects of the game.
Take this example:
A small group of 6 players doing an industry ops. They are attacked by something that looks like 6 other players. The small group reships into some kitchen sink setup that can take on the attackers, without going totally over the top.
The battle commences, and it is a pretty fun fight. The battle is not super close. The small corps kitchen sink got caught in a bad range / tracking situation and looses the fleet.
After the fight, GF’s are exchanged and conversation reveals that the attackers was just 2 RL friends, running 2 ships each with the same fittings, and 1 utility ship each.
The problem here is not so much in the battle itself, but more in the works that comes before the fight. The small corp need to organize and run a community. This is a time-consuming task. It often results in inefficiencies in general. The two friends have more freedom, they have less things to take care of in their game, for them to be an efficient fighting force.
And in the battle itself…
Yes, the multiboxers have to split their attention, but, in this case, they each have 100% control over half the fleet. This means decisions in the fight is put into action a lot more efficient.
The small corp has to communicate orders over voice to get each ship in the fleet to be efficient. Due to human factors, this can be quite difficult at times.
So yeah. The 2 attacking players, didn’t only have less to organize to get their PVP fleet going, they also had a much more efficient command-to-action pipeline in the fleet, despite their split attention.
I myself played EVE with a single character for 10 years. Always have I felt as I was at a disadvantage. Do you realize how much time it takes to get other players to scout for you, compared to just undocking an alt? Especially scout alts are almost a requirement to play on an equal footing with the rest of New Eden. So, now I run 2 accounts. And it is a HUGE difference.
The bigger issue with Alts is that it is often players with a lot of resources (RL or In-Game) that can afford running more than 1 alt.
Running many alts makes everything from PVP to ISK making a lot more efficient and profitable, without having to build a community to be able to do these things.
This is the ingredients for a positive feed-back loop, and those who profit from it, don’t want it to change (Naturally of cause. Who would?).
It is a precarious situation for CCP, New Eden and its player base.
CCP need to make a executive decision here. The player base is obviously split on these kinds of issues, and cannot reach agreement (this particular issue has been discussed for many years).
I made a reply, to another thread, that discuss and outline thoughts on why EVE seem to be split so much in its player-base and why issues like this remain unresolved, for such a long time.
TLDR: EVE Online has lost touch with many of its original game-design principles.
I hope you found my reply here interesting.
In any case
Fly safe o7