Based on…?
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I keep hearing people saying that multi-boxing is running rampant as though this is something new, however I have not actually seen much evidence of this that doesn’t fall under the “outliers” category.
Yes, SP farms are a thing now, and there are some people who do run an astronomical number of them. however, there are probably only around 10-20 people who run the supposed “100+ account SP farms”. the majority of them (being in the market myself, and knowing quite a few other SP farmers) are more modest in the 10-20 accounts area. and while SP farms do consume a lot of plex, which certainly is putting upwards pressure on the prices, they do not actually inject any isk into the economy. (technically they are an isk sink through taxes, although a rather miniscule one)
As for multi-boxing outside of that, yes we have 20 man rorqual fleets, but a decade ago we had 20 man hulk fleets, and while the % of the population doing it was smaller, the population was also much larger. (also mining doesn’t actually inject any isk into the economy. except from the random belt rats that show up, which is a fairly minuscule amount)
It was also quite common back in the “good old days” for every pvper to have at least 1 other account for off-grid boosting, and if you wanted to fly a capital you NEEDED to have a cyno account, and if you wanted a super you would also need either a cap-sitter, or a dedicated sub-cap alt since supers couldn’t dock anywhere. these days cap-sitters are virtually non-existent, and with the new upwell beacons, and capitals becoming more common in general having your own dedicated cyno alt isn’t nearly the hard requirement it used to be (although still probably a good idea)
and yet, despite all the extra reasons to have multiple accounts back then, when ccp actually released the stats on it 4 or 5 years ago, the average number of accounts per real eve player was only around 1.5
and it doesn’t actually seem like that has changed all that much.
Even looking at my own corporation, which is quite heavily skewed in favor of multiple accounts. (we have some rather strict requirements for our industry wing) out of the 60 or so of us, there are maybe 3 or 4 who have 10-15 accounts, and another 20 or so who have between 3-5. everyone else only has 1 or 2 accounts. and remember, this is for a corporation that skews very heavily in favor of having multiple accounts so can be considered way above average.
we are probably sitting somewhere around 2-2.5 accounts per member, which, means the overall game average is probably somewhere around 1.75-2 accounts per player which isn’t all that much higher than it was 4 or 5 years ago.
Fact is, people have been complaining for the past decade about “how expensive plex is” and how “new players can’t afford it” the problem isn’t with plex, its with the belief that plexing your account is something that everyone should be able to afford. Plex is a luxury, it always has been. back when I started playing the #1 advice for new players was to not even THINK about plexing your account for at least a year, because it wasn’t practical and you would just burn yourself out, and there where much better things to spend your isk on.
The only real difference of now vs then, is that back then if you couldn’t afford plex (and you couldn’t or refused to pay for a sub) you couldn’t play at all. now you still can, although in a more limited form. even the price of a subscription has remained the same, which is practically unheard of considering the global rate of inflation, which means if anything its even easier now to afford a subscription than it ever has been.
if you can no longer afford the luxury of plexing your account, spend the 50 cents a day to pay for a subscription, if you can’t afford the 50 cents a day go panhandle on a corner for like an hour or something, or enjoy the fact that you can still log in, chat with your friends, and fly most every sub-cap all for free. because there are better ways to spend your time, and your isk.
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Multi-boxing is a thing, but I would argue that it was more of a thing when input broadcasting via ISBoxer was allowed. As soon as it was banned there was a hit to the PCU numbers. That is part of the reason why the PCU is lower than it used to be. Note I said part. Logging in more than one character at a time basically took something of a hit.
Maybe, but again there is the opportunity cost of time involved. Even if it takes only 5 minutes to extract all the SP, and transfer the SP injectors to a single account…that is 500 minutes or about 8 hours and 20 minutes. You’d better be earning less that $15.84/hour if you are doing this otherwise you are kind of wasting some time…unless SP farming is a crap ton of fun for people.
Or they are a small SP farm.
IMO, right here…your econ prof. should give you an A.
Okay, I have a question. So, basically, I can pay CCP real money and buy myself a subscription and in recent times I’ve been wondering if I’m the only one I can do that.
Quite regularly I keep seeing people who hint at the fact that this isn’t actually possible and it’s really weird, because it makes it look like I’m the only one who can just pay money for a subscription instead of being a cheap-ass, poor loser in real life who doesn’t have a job to pay a silly fifteen bucks per month.
Do you know what’s going on with that?
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Yeah, not many people are willing to pay 15 bucks a month to play a game anymore. Look around, everything is mostly free to play now.
You make the money on cosmetics and name changes.
These are really, really dumb people.
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Solstice, do you get paid to read the forums and be a dick or do you just do it for free.
All you do is troll peoples posts.
Can’t you say anything nice about anything?
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I’m not a dick, they’re dumb people. If you don’t like honesty that’s not sugar coated so no one feels offended, then maybe you’re in the wrong place.
I’m looking at this from a purely objective standpoint.
- You get what you pay for.
- When something is free you are the product.
- Hundreds of billions of research behind making people want to pay money.
The third one is the most extensive one with the farthest reaching consequences, spanning over generations. Literally ALL “free to play” games work only … and I really mean only … because of never ending research that has been put into figuring out how to make people want something, so they spend money. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars here.
The core target audience of f2p games are people, who …
- seek (imaginary) social status, compensating it with vanity items or “golden ammo”.
- are easily addicted.
- escapists, who rather identify with their virtual character.
Why, you ask?
Because they’re easily exploited. These three, at least, you get when you boil it down to what matters to greedy upper management. Group one and two usually carry a lot of dumb people with low thresholds, low education and low cognitive abilities.
How I can tell?
Because smart people think more about how they spend their money, while dumb people don’t. They’re more impulsive buyers, simply because they’re having trouble controlling their urges. Worse, they’re usually incapable of recognizing outside influences manipulating their thinking (which happens by triggering feelings) and thus believe they “want” something, when in reality they’re being manipulated.
It is absolutely correct and accurate to call them dumb. 99.99% of them are dumb in one way or another. I’m not saying they’re bad people, btw. It’s important to understand that. I’m also not really trying to say that it’s their fault, because there’s enough evidence hinting at the fact that it actually isn’t.
I’m calling them dumb, because they’re incapable of making smart decisions. The smart decision is to spend 15 bucks for 30 days of game time and enjoying the fact that they do not have to work in a video game. The dumb decision is to waste many, many hours grinding so you can spend another 30 days grinding.
There is room to argue that people who multibox afk are smart people due to the fact that they’re not actually investing a lot of time and effort, and you’d be partially correct, but that still doesn’t change that just spending 15 bucks for 30 days of gametime … aka 50 cents per day … is the smarter decision, because these 50 cents per day remove literally everything required to multiboxafkgrind.
And then there comes the greed, too, and the slow degeneration of ones character by being able to keep amassing “wealth” (oddly enough, in many minds imaginary wealth is apparently as good as real wealth).
That’s when people turn into assholes. They lose all perspective for what actually matters. The biggest proof of them being dumb, though, is when something like the current situation happens.
CCP nerfs their income and they come whining about it, exposing that they’re lacking any and all realistic and sensible perspective on what they’re actually doing. Fact is that they’re still going to keep farming, fact is that they’re not really losing out on anything, fact is that paying a little more attention changes barely anything for anyone not dumb enough to cry about how his afk “gameplay” has been nerfed.
Fact is that “Clicker” games exist and there are people who play them, besides them being literally the same thing as tipping your finger onto the table continuously, except that the game tricks the player’s brain into believing it is being rewarded, causing addiction.
TL;DR:
Dumb.
As.
■■■■.
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Stop playing to PLEX. It’s $15. Surely anyone with a $1,000 PC can afford $15 /mo.
Play the game, don’t play to PLEX. Cancel your Brazzers pass for a month and get 2 months of Eve.
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Source ?
Which is as it should be. EVE still isn’t a farming simulator, but continues to be a high-risk PvP game. Only the most fortunate players will be able to not only survive but to thrive in its environment.
Who here still thinks that one can play for free and succeed in EVE if they’re only putting in enough hard work and diligence? I bet there will be plenty of you who believe this and you will all be happily mining asteroids.
Not everyone is supposed to have it easy in EVE and players work each day to make it hard for others. So stop thinking anyone here is going to make it easy for you to start as an alpha and allow you to PLEX your game. Others sooner turn you into their slaves before they let you have a free game. And instead of complaining about the PLEX price do new players need to take it as a sign of not playing EVE well enough, or not ruthless enough, in order to succeed.
Welcome to EVE.
Whutehound
Great arguments to persuade potential new players not to bother with EVE.
The argument for limiting Alphas is that they are intended to lead to more subscription-paying Omegas and/or PLEX purchases.
The argument for free Omegas (which I assume is what Solonius_Rex was presenting) is an argument for an alternative form of payment (e.g. microtransactions) with all the associated disadvantages. They work best with “game-addicted” players (FarmvillEVE) and a game design that supports a “pay to win” income model.
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Actually it’s you who is wrong, because these are indeed great arguments for new players to bother with EVE and in particular with weak players like yourself. There are in fact many potential EVE players out there who are just hoping to find a game where they can step on and exploit players like yourself.
EVE has always been a hardcore PvP game, where the weak players are meant to be harvested.
What is a problem for EVE is the belief that it was an easy game, which is what players like yourself are trying to sell here.
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Whitehound
EVE is a low-combat competitive game with a “free-fire” PvP rule. There isn’t much actual PvP combat, and most of it is the most boring kind: one-sided combat.
Using words like weak/strong players in regard to EVE is meaningless. Combat specialists wouldn’t choose EVE.
Easy/hard might be interesting, but it would highlight some oddities. Such as the easiest play (by a huge margin) is for the owners of “owned” nullSec. The hardest, but worst rewarded, is what rookies face.
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No, that’s just you ignoring how EVE works and how the real world worked for millenia.
The weak/dumb, who wants to have a structure yet can’t defend it, can’t have it because the strong/smart, who can shoot it down, will do so.
Are you also going to deny that evolution is a thing?
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LOL!
Post that as a thread title and you’ll get the first major threadnought of the year.
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You’re not listening. Stop thinking one could play EVE for free and easily succeed at the same time. You cannot, and it’s unrealistic to believe so. The player who pays for his or her subscription with cash will always have a better time than the one who pays 1b-2b ISKs per month for a PLEX. Anyone who argues otherwise is definitely a weak player. If it’s then a weakness of the mind or the wallet isn’t relevant to the fact that it is a weakness. Those who do understand this will also have plenty of ISKs and/or money to pay for their game time, while those who don’t are still stuck at grinding.
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usage patterns in his own corp?
Which is no way reflective of EVE overall, I don’t care what corp you’re in. I was multiboxing before I joined a player corp, now I play single Alpha and plex when I feel like getting the big toys out.
I see, are u stuck in your station in highsec and can’t get out?
How many of these whining Plex is too much threads do we need? Plex costs just as much as it should.