Why do you multibox?

Communications Center General Discussion
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only used 1 account for the first 2 or 3 years. eventually got a second account since I was a HS miner at the time, and having someone who could haul my jetcans for me was a huge efficiency increase. dipped my toes into Faction warfare as well shortly after that, and back in the day off-grid boosting was broken AF so I used it for that as well. did that for a year or so, then dropped back down to 1 account for the next 4 ish years since I was a bit burned out, wasn’t logging in as much (was mostly afk for that time, just logging in for training, casual industry jobs, and every so often would check out anything new that came out)

2 years ago or so, when I “came back” and moved out to null, I started with the second account just to act as a hauler. then I stripped all the indy skills from my main and injected a dedicated industry character. actually stated making the kind of IG income that would let me support multiple accounts, and 13 accounts later (with 10 more currently training as alphas) you could say things have sorta snow-balled.

as for why I do it, some stuff scales really well with multi-boxing, mining particularly. and having the extra industry slots speeds up large builds immensely. But mostly what I enjoy about it is the versatility, just about anything I feel like doing that day, I probably have an alt for that. if I feel like relaxing in a belt, i’ve got rorqs and barges, if I want to roam low-sec, I got a sub-cap specialist for that, if there is a big super-brawl, got one of those as well. all this without having to sacrifice training time on my main to branch out.

not to mention the pure convenience of being able to do things with alts on another screen while you focus on something with your main. just yesterday I was chaining a bunch of abyssals and was on an absolute roll, but I decided I wanted something from jita to improve my fit, so I logged in my jita alt, bought the stuff, threw up a courier contract. while one of my other alts ran to the local hub to grab some more boosters and ammo since I was running a little low.

For me its about “fun per hour” the more alts I have, and the more varied their skillsets are, the more likely it is that i’ll be able to have something I feel like doing that day, so I spend less time ship spinning.

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As an industrialist I have several accounts - basic economies of scale. For multiboxing, I frequently have a ship going to Jita to buy materials while a second ship takes finished goods to market (I sell in the smaller hubs). Here it’s economy of time - it’s more efficient to do these jobs in parallel. For missions it also makes sense - 2 ships can complete most missions in half the time.

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So I can be in more than one place at a time.
Skill training multiplier / Skill specialization.
Makes PvE more challenging/interesting.
Self-sufficiency.
So I can fail more spectacularly at PvP.

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24

Industry.

What can I say? Slot limitations are a bitch. Trust me when I say there was a time when it was much worse than what we see today. What we have is a god-send by comparison! Anyone who’s been playing any amount of time can attest to that.

Just to give you a cursory idea of what I mean. My current as well as several build queues in the past would have taken several years to complete if I tried to do it all on a single account. Even if everyone in my corp came together, and also had a single account, you’d be looking at months.

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I don’t multibox currently, but for me the appeal would be mainly for high sec ganking. It’s hard to move around in highsec with -10 sec status, so it’s really helpful to have a neutral scout to scan the fit for DPS calculation purposes, and provide a warp-in on a miner. That means a minimum of 2 accounts for comfortable “solo ganking”. Some targets also require more than 1 catalyst pilot to gank, so increasing the number of accounts will let you solo bigger and juicier targets.

I personally have more fun when I’m playing just one character at a time, though. The multitasking gets stressful.

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Thank you all for the replies so far! I’ve always found the concept of multiboxing really interesting so it’s been fun to read this thread. :slight_smile: Sure I knew some of these things people do with multiboxing already, but I’ve also learned new things too.

I loved this particular comment, stories like these are fun to read. Thank you for sharing! :smiley:

And of course it happens the day when I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat… :joy:

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First I got one because I wanted to haul. Then it became a boosting orca… and I realized it was crap. Then I gave SP to the other toons on the two accounts to do PI. Then skills to have always 9*6= 54 running industry jobs. Also crafting. Then I realized I could do moneu with the two toons . But then I needed another one for hailing…

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I started off as a miner in game so multiboxing was the logical decision for game play there. Now I would be bored if I only had to play one account quite honestly. But for pvp I only like using one account even though I have been on CTAs and was still mining on my other monitors and such over the years frequently.

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Dont forget, some people will try to run away with your penis.

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I started this character to be my main, hybrid turrets, drones, battleships, T2 stuff, all combat related. Got a second account to be a support character, first for mining. Wayyy too boring, even as an alt. Changed him to be logi pilot, but now I just don’t see the value in having a second pilot. It’s not the extra help or having a second role at my fingertips, I just don’t want to pay for 2 omega accounts. Not worth it.

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MultiBoxing is the natural response to circumvent the “mass mutli player” part of the game.

The penalty for playing in group is too high to depend on oher to achieve you personnal goal.

Who want to rely on a friend to boost his mining op? Solution multiboxing!
Who want to do industry op in group relying on coprmate to do this and that? Solution Multiboxing!
Who want to rely on friend to salvage that mission? Solution multiboxing!

If you add those “easilly” farmable activities like anom ratting or industry or PI, you get once again multiboxing.

The deep nature of the game design and the unrelyable nature of the human being suggest to many player that multiboxing is a safest way to advance toward personnal goal than depending on other player like they should, according to the wishes of CCP.

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Forget the ‘unrelyable nature’ of the human being and just look at the game design alone, 1 pilot is kinda a mediocre experience in the overall big picture. Also, work schedule will always trump game schedule too. I’m also guessing there are many people in the subscription population who probably don’t want to take micromanagement commands from some stranger for every mouse click. No thanks.

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i first had only one account, for 2 years
I started to play 2 accounts at the same time for two sets of reasons:
those which have been extensively described in the upper posts (synergy, scout, cyno, earning more isks, etc…)
and a second one : eve is a special mmo, quite “slow” except in pvp. Some non_pvp activities do not require many clicks (mining, explo, etc). It leaves you some unoccupied time. Multiboxing is a way to do something/keep your mind busy during these unoccupied times. For example, my alt mines roids while my main is doing explo. Mining can be seen as relaxant… or very boring… Either you multibox, or you start watching netflix…

Wyk

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Because of multiple activities in Eve, being able to do different ■■■■, and scouting for targets/enemies.

And also because some people have such low self-esteem that they just couldn’t face taking a loss in a fight and would probably go hang themselves in RL if they lost in a multiboxed 2 v 1 ( odds in their favor).

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Not my mind, but my player character. :wink:

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Are you telling me all those nullsecc alliances, with its thousands of members, are all a bunch of alts controlled by a handful of people?

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For most of my EvE life, I’ve used on account. Last year I subbed my alpha alt as after 5 years I got my first Cap and I needed a cyno alt, and a webber alt for my freighter.

I also found it quite useful to dualbox subcaps during skirmishes, as my corp is quite small, and with most of us dualboxing, it allows us to engage larger groups more effectively (Or die twice as painfully :stuck_out_tongue: )

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Do you have more of those texts? When reading it I achived a 9. Now I am back at a 7…

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My reasons:

ISK making, Content delivery, counter to local chat, ability to do everything myself if needed.

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