True multiboxing isn't particularly to replace other players. It's about economy of scale. Here's an example: You want to build a mining fleet - say 12 hulks and a links porpoise + hauling DST/Orca - total 14 accounts. Those 14 accounts will cost you say 2.5b each per month - so to plex all 14 will cost ~35b. If you're mining R64, you'll be making about 4-5b an hour - so per character - that's 350mil an hour. There are ALOT of activities that can make more isk/hr than that per character. Most of them (abyssals for example) require more 'Actions Per Minute' (APM). T6 Abyssals are maybe 600m/hour - but they're high APM so you can't run many of them simultaneously. On the above example, you're going to need to mine R64 for 8 hours a month to cover your plex cost. Because each character is mining the same amount, it doesn't matter how many you have - If you have 5 chars - it still takes you 8 hours to cover costs; it's the same if you had 50 chars. The difference is the rate at which you can make money after PLEX costs have been covered. (Obviously, if you mine less valuable ore, this 8 hours increases) That's where economy of scale comes in and this applies to ANY multiboxing PVE activity (Pochven Flashpoints, Pirate FW farming, Mining, StormBringer/Smartbomb ratting, Multiboxing C5-6 wormhole sites/Incursions). In PVE what you're looking for is effectively the highest ISK making activity that has low enough APM to be scaled up. And it varies across your activities - a good example of this is Pochven Sites vs Mining. Pochven Sites - Each site has a soft limit where after you have more than 15 characters in the site, the reward drops significantly. So if you're running 12-15 characters, it's a good option. If you have 30 accounts however, you'd have to be running 2 sites at the same time with 2 separate fleets (which is much more difficult because it doubles the APM). Mining - More accounts in this scenario simply means emptying ore holds/compressing more often. A hulk will need it's ore hold emptying every 2 cycles (approx every 140 seconds - 2 laser cycles). With a set of 12 hulks, it's going to take an experienced multiboxer maybe 30 seconds to empty and compress the ore from all of them. Once the ore holds are full, you have until the end of the next laser cycle (70 seconds) to empty the holds before the lasers turn off because the hold is full. So effectively, you could double the amount of hulks to 24, taking you 60 seconds to empty and still leaving you with another 10 seconds before you need to repeat the process. If you want to go beyond that, you need a ship with a larger ore hold to give you a bigger timeframe for emptying/compressing the holds - like the Mackinaw - the Mackinaw will mine about 30% slower than a hulk in terms of M3/hour. In this scenario, going from 24 hulks -> 36 mackinaws isn't worth it. You're only mining slightly more, but doing alot more work. But if you're going from 24 hulks -> 48 Mackinaws, it becomes worth it - BUT to run that many clients you need ALOT of RAM, VRAM and Processing power. So it then becomes a matter of working out what your PC can handle and balancing that against the optimal setup for your chosen activity and APM capability. Source: I've been multiboxing for nearly 15 years, and taught many corp/alliancemates the above. As you said in the video it's about the level at which you want to play the game - some of my guys have come into the alliance with a subcap main, maybe a dread alt and a cyno account; to a point where they wind up with 15-20 accounts and multiple supercaps within a 12 month period. On needing an epic gaming rig - this is somewhat a myth. If you run in low graphics, and put non-essential clients on 'super-potato mode' (like barges for mining) you can run a lot on an average rig. Until recently i was running 15 clients on the PC i built in 2011: CPU: Intel i7-2600k, Memory: 32GB DDR3, GPU: AMD R9 290x 4GB. I'm now running: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Memory: 64GB DDR4 GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060 TI Hope this helps put some first hand experience out there o7
@@sir_slimestone3797 You defo need some thinking and reaction and it is not so easy.. as it sounds. =] (not one of them btw. I can't multibox in abyss, to much work to do and I am to old for this.)
There is a difference between someone with multiple accounts to move and scout for their Capital Ship and someone with 10 accounts ganking in high sec.
I personally don't think there is. What is the functional difference between 10 players ganking you on their own accounts and one player ganking you on 10 accounts?
@@captainbenzie the difference is there is a need for 10 player that need to cooperate, then one person mulitiboxing and ganking, I have played mmorpg for now over 20 years and i have always looked at it as cheating and makes a bad community, including people leaving since a good deal of players look at is as cheating.
@@captainbenzie it is the same as bring a gun to a fist fight and say it is fair. since there are just one player on both sides yet one have 10 ships and there other just one. it is one of the most idiotic arguments i have ever heard within gaming, if you cant see the detrimental effect this can have on a game especially pvp, then you have no clue of fair gaming and sportsmanship.
@@frodehorgen2519 okay, so the ten guys ganking you is also fair?? This is EVE, NOTHING is fair, and that's the point. If you get ganked by a fleet of ten guys, come back with eleven friends. Warfare isn't fair. Piracy isn't fair. You think the privateers in the Carribbean only picked on armed navy vessels? You think that the nullsec blocs message ahead to ask what they're bringing, agree to a "points value" and set tournament rules for their wars?? I think you've massively misunderstood EVE if you think fairness EVER comes into it. It's not about fair, it's about swinging the odds into your favour. Get some friends, band together and be more than any one person can be. Swing the odds to your favour, or stop complaining. Multiboxing changes nothing. But most backwards of your argument is that I'd rather be ganked by one guy piloting ten ships, then ten guys individually. I think I personally stand more of a chance in the former 😉
They've encouraged it since like 06 when they started running Power of 2 discounts. Course at that time, multiboxing was literally being a person with an expensive internet connection and 2 physical computers to play on.
@@epeeypen Yes, and lets do a little math here. If someone wanted to multibox like a mining fleet of their own, say 10 toons... how many mid tier desktops would that have taken? Additionally for a lot of people who PVP boxed, they did still run separate machines. Like IDK how expensive stuff was for you. But when I got into multiboxing, and wanted to be able to see 2 instances of the game up at once... it was just cheaper to buy another computer at Walmart and run copy 2 on that... than it was to buy a graphics card that would display 2 instances of the game well. (Also as I was also playing WOW at the time, I could multibox a pocket healer with the separate tower and avoid their anti-boxing rules)
@@Nikarus2370 i am unaware of anyone who did that. I have been playing for nearly 20 years. most people just got two monitors or even three monitors. you did not need multiple machines to run the game up to 3 or 4 clients. yes when it got into 10 clients you might need a beefer computer but not a super gaming computer or anything like that. now for wow you would for sure need two computers
So im going to speak out of my experience directly as a person whom has been attempting to play eve online without. Im also a relatively new player with little experience so theres that but this was my impression. As i was exploring and starting esphecially doing exploration and wormholing the shear ammount of isk generation that would be possible had i just 1 more ship at my disposal without having to share the loot completely changed the dynamic of isk production to the point where i found it to be the approach i would have to take to be compedetive with all that entails for both my financial resources irl and ingame. I feelt in a large part that i had to multibox basically and fork up the irl money to train up an extra account, and i gotta be honnest it was quite of a mood killer.
The general need to multibox for Jump freighters is one thing that really put me off of Eve. I had thought to progress into them to help establish a remote industrial set-up and supply chain, but after training into them for a couple months I more fully learned that the process requires a second player to light up a beacon. My playstyle was a bit too casual to justify getting another account up, and the issue with trying to find a reliable and trustworthy corp mate willing to abide by my schedule didn't seem to be too feasible. I think that character may have actually finished training to fly one, but I scrapped the idea of getting one.
How is it destructive? What is functionally different between getting ganked by ten ships controlled by one player, or getting ganked by ten ships controlled by separate players, for example?
@@captainbenzie The difference is that the individual gets to keep everything they gank and whatever they lose is barely felt as it is spread across 10 characters whereas 10 separate players have to split loot but ship losses fall on the head of the loser which makes trying to convince 10 people that the activity is economically viable for 1/10th of the take damn near impossible while Johnny No-friends can gank like a champ without having to take it to a steering committee.
The issue stems with how slow paced the game is. When I started doing missions, I pretty quickly noticed there is so much downtime that I could be doing this on two or three characters simultaneously. And that's what I do now.
@@meowmixmcmeowster1370 Thats the biggest problem the game now has to cater to multiboxing or they will loose too much revenue, and in return we get a more dulled down solo player experience
Here's my take: multiboxing is the worst issue in EVE. It should be banned. Having multiple accounts/characters is fine, having more than one active simultaneously is not. Why do I think multiboxing is that bad? EVE is an MMO. It was designed to require players to cooperate to achieve larger goals. Multiboxing is a way to cheat / work around this design. Not only does it mean that fewer people will be playing together and interacting with each other. It also means that one person will be profiting way more than intended by the game design. Let's take industry/mining as an example. In a large mining fleet, everyone will want a cut of the resources mined. A single person multiboxing gets all the resources for themselves AND denies other players the chance to obtain those resources. How is that not cheating? Let's look at pvp. A multiboxer will always be more efficient than a group of real people. Flying a bunch of alts doesn't require communication or teamwork. Giving commands to x ships simultaneously means they won't fumble with their controls, fire at a wrong target, fly out of optimal range, etc. The loot, once again, goes to one person as opposed to being split up between members of the fleet. I've also seen instances of a single person playing both sides in FW. A couple of alts on one side, a couple of alts on the other side endlessly killing each other, farming insane amounts of LP and denying other people content. The list goes on and on. Seeing instances of this happening feels very discouraging for me as a player. Like, if I don't want to bother flying 10 accounts, I will never have a chance to achieve anything as easily or quickly as multiboxers do.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? I don't think anyone could actually tell the difference, and that's why it's weird to me that folks get upset by it. It's why it FEELS like the anger is a perceived jealousy rather than anything meaningful. And I don't multibox.
@@captainbenzie well let's think about it. In your example one guy can decide to go ruin someone's day and easily do it by controlling 10 accounts. Without multiboxing he would first have to find 9 other guys who also want to ruin someone's day, fleet up, coordinate with them, etc. Without multiboxing there would be way fewer ganks. Just because it's not as easy to pull off when it requires actual communication and multiple people willing to do the thing who are online at the same time and so on. Back to my point: multiboxing is a way to work around the design of the game. Doing things that one player should not be able to do.
@@captainbenziebecause 10 players need to communicate and work together. Even if you say the concerns in a whiny voice it doesn't change that fact. Example: organize a birthday party inviting 10 people. Zero people in the entire world think that getting 10 people to gather at the same time and place and bring a present is equal in effort to one person alone buying themselves 10 presents. There's No comparison. It's so dang simple and the disingenuous whiny voice nonsense just makes *you* look bad.
CCP isn't looking the other way with regard to multiboxing. They actively state that it is allowed in their TOS and right below that it says you cannot play two accounts at the same time unless both are Omega accounts. They go even further and encourage it. When you try to play with two accounts and one is not omega, they spawn a pop-up that essentially says, you are more than welcome to do this, but only if both accounts are Omega. They allow and encourage it, I believe, for one simple reason. That is, if multiboxing is against TOS then most people won't do it. However some and perhaps even many will, they cannot withstand the temptation. CCP is well aware that bans and indeed all other "anti-cheat" software measures are reactionary in nature as well as easily circumventable. This of course means that there will always be people availing themselves of this advantage whilst the general player base are largely hapless victims, and even those in the know are powerless to negate the advantage without themselves going rogue. Therefore, they have, I believe rightly, decided that it will be allowed under the TOS, so that the opportunity to exploit it is available to everyone, and of course, comes without the threat of penalty. Obviously it is good for the bottom line as well, which for a niche product is always a concern, and that is probably the true motivation. The ability to generate additional revenue from any given consumer is always a plus. I don't need to attract new customers if I can get the ones I have to buy more.
Coming from someone who is in a small corp multi boxing helps us continue to do content on dead nights while we build numbers and recruitment, if your not using a way to make it so all your clients copy your key inputs, i see no issue with it, but seeing suicide gankers who is clearly key input setup, ya no that should be banned or dealt with accordingly.
i fly with 14 toons (all Omega thru Plex) and mine belts solo in a couple of hours. Also do system patrol when there's no ice or rare ore to mine around. can't see any problem with multiboxing, the bots are.
the answer is YES this is the final nail in the coffin for a new player. he finally realizes how small of a fish he is, that he is there to feed the whales/nolifers, and that to even have 0.0001% chance to compete he will need to run 5 eve online acounts. and ccp is ok with this, because that is their business model.
I massively disagree. If you're trying to play EVE, an experiential game, competitively, you're going to have a bad time. New players should be teaming up, getting into a corp, and recognising that him being a small fish is the POINT of EVE. You're one player in a massive, living, ever-growing and expanding universe. Your actions can, and do, have consequences, but there's no leaderboard. Nobody is "winning" at EVE over anyone else. Focus on having fun, living your story in game. That's what it's about.
Multiboxing has ruined the pirate FW experience for players with single accounts. You play as is intended and start capping a plex then just before the end someone with 15 Algos warps in and essentially deprives you of any meaningful reward. Worse still, they multibox a group on both sides of FW meaning that if you are in one of the larger plexes with their group, they send in a fleet from the opposite side and only target you so you are removed. Personally I think it should be capped at 3 omega accounts simultaneously
I multibox 6 accounts for mining. I'll generally only run 2 for other PvE content though and most often it's something like my scanning character probes out a combat site and warps my PvE combat pilot to the site then follows him in to salvage the room while the combat toon moves onto the next one. Sometimes I'm I'll run 2 combat pilots for lvl 4 missions with a third account to salvage behind the first 2. I've tried running 2 missile boats and 2 drone boats, assisting the drones to the missile boats and orbiting them. The complexity of running multiple accounts in combat is MUCH higher than running multiple miners where all you have to do is dump into the orca and compress the ice/ore. That guy running 8 accounts in PvP and being effective is insane. Not many people can do that.
It's cancer, the idea is to be solo or rely on friends, not be half the universe. Drastically unbalances the game, true solo players should be able to hire npc mercs to even things out, since banning multboxing would probably kill eve.
@@captainbenzie Wow, i really need the crayons here... When's the last time you managed to get 10 people to do what you want, when you want? and how easy was that? If you were "Meant" to control multiple characters, you'd have been able to from the start. Multiboxing straight up nullifies half the aspects of eve, you're playing a different game. The only real solution is to split the server into solo and multiboxers.
@@crankyboris You don't seem to understand the mechanics of EVE Online. You ARE able to have several accounts on your launcher and you ARE able to run them simultaneously when you have Omega. It doesn't nullify anything. But you seem like one of those jealous people, just like Benzie described in his video.
@@crankyboris Ok, let's do that then. Split the game servers and force people to pick one or the other with the caveat that you can NEVER transfer between the two. But, when the "solo" servers don't generate enough ISK in game and real-life Icelandic Kronners to justify keeping them running, don't come-a-crying!
Multiboxing destroyed economy in WOW. I know from fact because i have been playing for since 2005! Same thing here. If you have one guy mining on 8 accounts at the same time that means he is pumping marketplace 8x faster then he would be able to do if he is not multiboxing. That is dropping the price for which item can be sold due to saturation of the marketplace thus others who are not multiboxing would essentially earn less.
This is factually inaccurate and the stats don't add up. If you had eight players instead of one player on eight ships, the market would be "being pumped" at the same rate. That's not how market forces work, especially in an environment where drop rates etc can be tweaked by the developers. Once again, this simply proves my point that one guy with ten ships is NO DIFFERENT to ten guys with one ship.
@@captainbenzie but it actually is. There is quate a differece between 1 person mining order while controlling all the miners at the same time and 8 players that might mine ore at the same time. Like I said multiboxing destroyed mining and herbalism in Wow especially because one nod could be tagged and it would despawn after certain amount of time. This is the same, if you have 1 player doing mining at the same time on 8 characters is not the same as 8 possible miners that would mine at all one point. You are even said in the video, if imagine now that you don't have that multiboxer, would there be a noticeable difference?
Love most of your videos and you have been a great teacher of Eve for me so far (I just started a few weeks ago). It seems we have vastly different views on this particular topic though. A apt metaphor: I choose to play Monopoly with friends. When my friend is handing out the initial game pieces, I ask for 4 pieces to move on the board instead of 1 piece. When asked why, I say that I will be playing the same game with 4 different pieces. At the end of the game, I win...but did I really win? Or did I just make the game less fun for myself and those around me? There are reasons why multiboxing is a no-go in most MMOs.
This is a false analogy. EVE isn't a competition. It doesn't have rules about fairness. It's a collaboration where players work together to achieve great things, where players work together to create an astonishing universe. How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? Neither are fair. That's the point.
Also, who is going to be ganked more often. The guy who has 5 alts ready to tackle any aggression or lone miner trying to earn some isk? There is so much against multi box I will have to compile a wall of text and then post here.
@@captainbenzie no i do not. I am in a Corp, thank you. It still feels bad when you get killed by someone because he paid more. There is no way around that.
18:02 "Stop playing eve as a competition" - Someone who lost the plot Once upon a time all the women wore dresses, then one girl wore a skirt. Now I see cheeks on a regular basis... These are basic market forces, they can't be beaten.
If you live life constantly competing with everyone around you, you're going to end up sad, alone, and burned out. EVE is a game, something played to relax and unwind from work. Compare to yourself, how far you've come compared to how you were, but it's pointless trying to compete with everyone else.
If you aren't multiboxing, you aren't playing the game right. I say this as someone who used to say that I would never multibox. The longer you play, the more accounts you acquire.
12 years of playing, one of the largest content creators in EVE, but I'm "not playing right" because I've never multiboxed? Bro that's the point. It's not necessary and it's weird to make such a big thing of it. It's beneficial, sure, and it can replace the need to have people in a fleet. But some of us are lucky enough to have those players.
@@captainbenzie I'm not saying there aren't some outliers, but in general the more you grow in the game, the more you typically want/need to use other accounts. When I moved to nullsec, I had one account. After a short while of running a vni for isk, I decided that I wanted to spin up another account for more isk generation. The second account became a emergency cyno alt when my main got into a carrier (thanks to cyno changes). Some time after that I decided that I wanted to run BLOPs fleets, which to do so efficiently would require a couple of other accounts for hunting targets. Then I moved to J space.. oh boy.. I've added a 5th account for boosting and additional PI. I've also got 2 other alpha accounts.. one for seeds, and one for wormhole rollers. Do I need half of that really? No.. but if I didn't my gameplay would be affected in ways which I would see negatively. In comparison to some of my other corp mates, the accounts I have is laughable. A few of my corp mates run entire eos fleets consisting of 15+ accounts. Do you know how many accounts Olmeca Gold had when he was operating in delve? You can absolutely play this game with one account depending on your play style. We don't want to turn anyone away from EVE by telling them that they have to be able to afford multiple accounts to play obviously. The depth of the game already does a good job of deterring players.. I mean you could write a book on solo pvp alone. :D
if you are mainly miner and industrialists, it makes no sense to sit in a belt with only one miner, when 3 miners makes you 3x more isk for same time spent. your also bit off when it comes to the 3 toons for doing mining, reprocessing and so on, beacuse the skill needed to make you good miner, are also the exact same skills needed that give you good reprocessing skills. considering the average industrialist and miner run 3 accounts i belive, if that wasent the case, it would drop the amount of ore mined by atleast 70%, and if that was the case, what would you think would happend to all mineral prices? they would sky rocket, and make everything in the game exceptional expensive. for multiboxing in PVP, you can be somewhat efficient if you multibox 2 ships with the same role, butthat'ss also the limit for 98% of the player base. so having 1 guy trying to multibox 8 toons should be a walk in the park to kill compared to going up ageinst 8 ships controlled by 8 different players
Theoretically, but that's not always the case as that multiboxer showed us! But yeah, this agrees with my point that one player on ten accounts is the same as ten players on one account each.
I don't have an issue with multiboxers. I have an issue with botters and people who use scripts or automation. And it really just comes down to the fact that I don't like cheaters. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes but when you have 6-10 tools all with the same name minus some extra numbers and they all perform the same action at the same time... Your botting and unfortunately you're not going to convince me otherwise. And you're actually cheating. That I have a problem with. If you're running 3 tools performing different roles at the same time and you have the skill to do so efficiently without scripts and automation programs, we're cool and I honestly respect the hell out of that.
Multiboxing kills the part of the game that is supposed to require community and teamwork. If CCP doesn't care about multiboxing then they should remove the requirement to have a second pilot. Get rid of cynos or change them. get rid of repairs. Let a single pilot just control a fleet of drone ships. Eve is and RPG, you have a fleet of pilots a tank a dps a healer its just that people dont really play like that (which is more of a failure of game design). If CCP wants people to multibox then they should just let pilots control little fleets. You are missing the point that multibox stuff is stuff that is intended to be done with another pilot. Part of the intended challenge is to have to find another pilot to team up with. The intention of the game is to pilot a ship not an entire fleet. If a guy multiboxing 8 ships wipes out a belt or system of all the good ore it can be prettty shitty for someone who is just solo mining. When almost no one is going to be able to get a handful of individual pilots to get together to mine
How would you even tell? How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? It feels like people are getting "jealous" that others can multibox when they can't. Functionally, there's no difference. It doesn't affect those of us who don't multibox. Yet people get weirdly defensive on it.
@@captainbenzie I am only referring to mining in HS as that's all I do. But I think functionally there is a difference. Because miners multi-box more resources are harvested and thus the economy is stable. Looking around the EVE community there isn't a whole lot of people who enjoy mining. I think if tomorrow CCP stripped away multi-boxing the economy would absolutely look like a dumpster fire. If 50% of "miners" are multi-boxing divide the resources available by whatever you think the average is for accounts. Now... all those shiny T2 parts and ships.. triple or quadruple the price because the materials are scarce and more expensive. As far as "eating belts" IDK where this is happening but I am in the Genesis constellation and I can take you to almost any system and the belts are 95% untouched and devoid of players.
@@captainbenzie the fact that the odds of getting ganked by ten pilots is much less than the odds of getting ganked by one player with several ships. I am not really talking about getting ganked as much as I am talking about having to have a player scout for you or cyno or something.
@@captainbenzie Dude why do you keep repeating the same sentence in response to more and more answers about the negative sides multiboxing can have? As if multiboxing only comes into play in the area of ganking Meanwhile, many have already written that coordinating 10 players is also a form of challenge that is completely eliminated for the multiboxer. Furthermore, a multiboxer can also completely undermine the chain in an economy. Where before 2-3 people are involved in an end product (and something falls off for everyone on the side) is thus also obsolete
Downside with multiboxing is see the amount of people logged in (30k) and then think about how many are multi boxed . Other trouble is some people are not that social and have trouble getting in corps and do stuff with the corp.
Set up 4 accounts for pi and other indy processes, but reducing to one account now. Simply do not have time for the processes and never was capable of plexing any account. Multiboxing can make you independent yet lonely in space. Will dump all indy and switch to pvp now. Thoughtful vid. Awesome!
One thing to keep in mind (because it was kinda hedged in the video) is that it's against the terms of service to multibox with alpha accounts. You can't even have an omega account and an alpha account running at the same time: if you have multiple accounts running simultaneously, they must be omega accounts. I realize this isn't an argument for or against multiboxing as an idea, but it's a critical piece of context that isn't obvious.
That's funny because it let me do it ..... one account was on steam another was on the stand alone . Maybe it's because they were on different emails also .
Just having one played well is pretty tough, kudos to them. If they can handle it and they're paying for it, none of my business. I'll be honest. If I could pull it off, I'd fly a pair of Logistics. Finding a likeminded logie wingman is not an easy task.
I'm not angry, I'm sad. When you look at that there are 30,000 players on the server your heart cheers up, then the cold truth: there are only 9-10 thousand of us, the rest are alts. Smaller market hubs are empty, almost abandoned, because alts don't buy anything. Rens, for example, used to be a place where the beautiful ISK could turn, but today, unfortunately, it is a wasteland.
I multiboxed Homefront ops sites for a week with 5 accounts. I will never do it again. It is rough to keep up with 5 ships in a dynamic environment while clicking until your mousehand hurts and you start to feel like taking a couple days off completely. Running abyssals after that felt so serene you wouldn't even believe. Having an alt to do scouting and such can be very handy but as you said, completely doable with a corpmate for example. I also prefer doing stuff with corpmates, it brings peolpe together and builds up the group. Nowadays I could say that I like creating content for other pilots more than doing stuff solo.
I multibox 6. They most def can pay for themselves. I don’t really see the point of the “cheating” or “it’s not fair” fights. Don’t be jealous. It’s really that simple. Not one person has had a solid argument that I’ve heard about not multiboxing. Until at least one person has a legit, thought out, factual reply.. that isn’t rooted in jealousy, I could care less man. lol.
Groups that gate keep membership based around multi-boxing, generally do so with a specific purpose. They have established goals they are looking to fulfill as an entity. It doesn't mean they're elite, or that they are better than other players just because they have this policy. Why they have it is for a set purpose. Honestly it feels as though people are in their feelings over rejection, without giving thought as to why.
A little late to the conversation, but I feel like I have something to contribute. Since I started playing in 2007, I've always have had 3 accounts. One hauler, one 'main' and one support character for when I was 'soloing'. I only broke the bank in the last couple of years and now run 10 accounts simultaneously. The reason I made the switch? There was an activity I enjoyed doing with my corporation and the individual who ran that particular activity decided they didn't want to anymore. And since I didn't have enough pull in the corp to bring the players online and go do the thing. I decided I'd multibox the bare minimum of accounts to solo the content. That way if I come up short on corp mates to run with me, the one guy that comes along can still do the activity.
I'd say Mining is disproportionately impacted by multi-boxing by the nature of Boosting. It's *much* more efficient to have 50 boosted Hulks mining a belt than it is to have 5 boosted Hulks.
Organization. The time spent of people getting together instead of one afker. The profits getting shared throughout a corp or fleet instead of concentrated on one person. Cooperation and fraternity of a group of people..
That is an understatement. Multiboxing can allow you to dominate disproportionately. How is it different. Imagine Multiboxing horde hoovering up all the veldspar in amarr space...or wormhole ratting every site so there is no content unless you go down the chain 7 systems (cause they have eyes everywhere).
@@captainbenzie Consolidation of resources for one thing. If 50 people are all mining the same resource that's 50 different sellers/producer. If *one* person is mining all the resources... Also it's a force multiplier. Why does it have to be 1 player with 5 alts vs 5 players with 1 alt, when you could instead have 5 players with 5 alts? Especially considering that at least one person needs to be "sacrificed" to sit in a mining booster ship. Going from 1 Orca boosting 4 Hulks, to 1 Orca boosting *24* Hulks is huuuuge.
@@Done25. This is bordering a strawman argument. Go fly to any ore belt in HS and tell me how many people are sitting on that belt. I am a miner(and I multibox) and I can say 90% of the time NOBODY is touching those belts. the other 10% of the time it is just someone in a venture trying to mine up 2000ore for dailies. I would guess(cant prove obviously) that without multiboxing miners the economy would be quite brutal. Because there is not 5 other people wanting to dig. 1 person selling all the resources vs 5... silly argument because unless its ICE .. there isnt 5 other people willing to dig. Wont even bother with 24 hulk argument as I cant think of a belt of any resources that could sustain that. Let alone what your PC would have to look like to run so many.
I personally multibox two accounts and I love it, but I also sometimes just play on one account if I want to relax because playing two accounts feels like balancing on a knifes edge, I have to have absolute focus to do it.
No, simply because when there’s nothing going on in my alliance corp, I’m using an industry alt to make isk to help replenish my funds for pvp. With alts & multiboxing I can dabble in different aspects of Eve that I wouldn’t otherwise tryout if it wasn’t possible without real other players. It’s still very difficult to pvp while multi boxing multiple characters on grid. Also many people don’t do more than 2 accounts, no one is rage quitting because of a few people that run 5+ accounts. It’s often difficult to get a lot of people to go and fleet mine ore..
That sounds like a corp issue - we near constantly have mining fleets up. But that is congruent with my argument that multiboxing can help someone who doesn't have access to players to fly with. Either way, I don't see it as a negative
Whenever multiboxing is used to avoid interactions with other players, then I think it harms the game. Whenever it is used to increase interactions with other players, it's good. For other purposes, I'm neutral about it. Neccessity drives social interactions, and that is true for EVE as well. Because no matter how many characters you multibox, the player is still a single player and can only pay attention to one thing. And multiboxers create the illusion of having many other people, but most of their characters aren't interactable.
I’m sorry to say I multi box mining, I go out with 12 accounts 10 miners one Rocco and one freighter to move the ice or ore back to the station. I do not like people who multi box and use the multiple programs will allow you to ghost your mouse exactly over all accounts so if you press war on one account the mouse press on all of the accounts, if you can’t play multiple accounts as separate instances with you controlling one at a time then you shouldn’t be playing the game because that is the only way is not cheating. I have 10 monitors on my PC with the 12 accounts open playing the game and that’s the only way I enjoy playing, I have a corporation with all my friends, we all go mining and we all multi box, to the point that we can go mining a ice belt and clear it in two hours max and then we normally wait around and do another one three hours later
Considering how CCP is in charge of their game, and are very assertive in continuing to make it profitable, they will do what they want. Which is to make money. They are clearly making money from this, and until this practice becomes a problem for CCP it will continue unabated. At the end of the day CCP is a business, and the purpose of business is to make a profit, and as much profit as possible. Like a certain troubleshooter said, " Multiboxers are either a benefit or a problem, if they're a benefit they're not my problem".
I'd like it if they made multibooxing illegal and banned those accounts but they wont because it lines their pockets and pumps up their numbers. If I get caught in Eve's game of cat and mouse, its fine thats part of eve. But some homie who catches me because he had 10+ accounts running at once? it just feels bad to even deal with that and the only recourse I have is to do it myself or just stop playing
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? Sounds like you fucked up and are trying to find something else to blame. I'd even argue it's HARDER to effectively multibox PvP, so if someone multibox ganks you, they're a damned good player.
@@captainbenzie Its functionally different because this is an MMO and in eve in specific is made special by its player to player interaction. So getting ganked by ten players in ten ships feels better than one guy in ten ships because there is a decree of community interaction at play there. When its two players going up against one another it just feels different. Not unlike stream sniping for example where yeah functionally nothing has changed but knowing the otherside has an unfair advantage takes away a lot of the enjoyment. I would compare it to buying things from the market. There is a value in knowing the things you are using come from other players not just an NPC vendor even though the outcome is the same. And frankly I don't appreciate the aggressive tone you're taking because I can turn that right back around on you and say you're just a trash player who cant eek out a win unless you impossibly stack the odds in your favor and you are in your feelings about people calling you out about it while hiding behind it taking oh so much skill to have multiple windows open
@@waffleswafflson3076 Except he even says in his video he only uses 1 acct when he plays... As far as player to player interaction, hard pass. EVE has a pretty toxic/elitist playerbase. Frankly I am amazed CCP allows some of the stuff to go into chat unchallenged. Homophobic, racial, you name it slurs.
@@chiisaiinu7327 Really? Have you not watched any of the streams on Twitch? Some of the most generous and friendly people are giving out free stuff every single day. You have two help channels in the game where people sit day in and day out to help new players. You have Mike with his Magic Bus roaming newbie areas to hand out free stuff to players. In other words, if the players around you are toxic, you're around the wrong type of players.
I agree with most you said here. One thing i would like to point out is, multiboxing is incentivized by CCP. When an MCT has the same price as another account, and that secondary account can be logged in at the same time, where the alt you used the MCT on cannot, (and im arguing only the price, not the fact that you cant login two characters from the same account), I would say CCP pushes for people having multiple accounts.
Absolutely valid and a good argument for how multiboxing isn't killing the game. A game Dev that's kept a game alive 22 years and wants at least 22 more isn't going to design their game in a way that kills it.
Everything can be abused, ahole shows up with 30 retrievers and an orca, all the characters have the same name numbered and they wipe out a whole ice field in 30 seconds, BAD... There IS A LIMIT ON RESOURCES...
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? How is 30 guys wrecking a belt fine, but one guy with 30 ships doing it bad?
@@captainbenzie It looks a lot like this gets to the cor of pay to win bias, one guy doing the work of 30 to strip mine resources away before other players have a chance to participate and gain from the resources. It also brings a thought to mind that excessive multiboxing could eventually cripple the economy of Eve if less players need less stuff while more accounts strip mine the resources preventing players who would otherwise engage in profiting and feeling like why should they bother anymore. Just a random thought that hit while replying about the pay to win aspect.
@captainbenzie i don't think that's a fair statement. And also can't be about just mining rocks. I've personally been cockblocked by multiboxers huffing Gas in null. Null gas sites only have 1 site per region, if you care about the type of gas then there's literally only 1 site in new eden to huff at any time. Cue a guy hoarding a gas site with 5 alts. My fit wasn't capable of a gas cloud exploding as frequently as this one was, I had to leave and come back 1 hour later and scan for a new site.
EVE is a game with a community-driven economy and community-driven politics in the form of territories, which in turn provide access to special forms of mining, rats, etc. ISK are a massive form of resources. They (sometimes) determine the quality and quantity of ships you can send, for example, in the battle for the things mentioned above. And yes EVE is not fair, but at least the most rudimentary "laws" should still exist, because at the end of the day it should be and remain a game. If 1 person has so much impact on the above points, in my opinion, it gets out of hand ... I also find it somewhat questionable to find a method in an MMO that promotes not having to interact with other players.
"if you can log in and have fun who cares" I care, the person that runs content with other 4 real people having our content stolen by a single person trying to make payroll to keep feeding their alts (this is very prominent on homefronts and incursions)
How would you even know? This genuinely reads like jealousy. What's different to having "your content stolen" by five individual players, and why would that be okay comparatively??
Industry is basically meant for multiboxing. For starters, you are limited by the number of production/research/reaction lines per character, so buying a second account doubles your industrial capabilities. Hell, it more than doubles it when you factor in different skill specializations. Invention requires science skills. Refining requires Reprocessing skills. Production requires... production skills. To max out these trees can take 1+ year each, so 3 accounts set up to specialize in one aspect of industry speeds that up. And if you're doing that might as well get a market alt focusing on the trade skills so you capture more profit versus selling to buy orders. Then circling back to mining, the extremely low APM combined with how fleet boosts work essentially all but guarantees the activity scales well with multiboxing. Ultimately, multiboxing exists because outside of PVP, EVE is passive and/or low APM and even within PVP, its far lower APM than is required of, say, a first-person shooter. The game design of EVE itself makes muotiboxing possible. Its not required, but there's a far smaller loss in per-character effectiveness compared to trying to multibox a FPS team, for example.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always looked at multi boxing as increased risk. Granted the player who is multi boxing is typically of higher skill, they will never be able to optimize the piloting of one ship when they’re managing 5. All that to say, if someone is bringing multiple ships to the field they’re risking more while having to manage more. When you have friends to bring to the table it creates some unique battles and results.
This! Exactly this! Folks seem to think it's easy and somehow reduces risk. You've got one set of eyes and hands working and entire operation rather than a full team.
I got into multiboxing since my first second corp CEO ran upwards of 12 accounts for mining. I was just blown away how he could clear mining Anoms with either an Orca or Rorq before scarcity. I have 7 total accounts, 6 are Omega (I pay the subs for them at at least 3 mo at a time) and one Alpha for my Alliance Home Defense group. I like having the versatility of what I want to do and which of my alts to do it on if my main is not able or not good at it. I think it is good for the game as it keeps me playing it, instead of only being restricted to one account with a max of 3 characters.
I think people have a problem with botting not multiboxing. I'd be very impressed to find a person using 8 accounts killing folks perfectly without using some sort of bot program streamlining all of the individual actions needed. If a person is actually multiboxing with 8 accounts more likely they're mining which doesn't require a huge attention span to do that correctly. Multiboxing is good for folks that don't want to wait for that 1 character to learn scanning, mining, manufacturing, and combat to do all of those things. The game does reward folks who are willing to use multiple accounts to make specialized characters around those themes. If that person is mutiboxing 8 accounts to run combat sites without a bot program, then I'll tip my hat to that person cuz that is a challenge to do that without losing ships. Even more so if that person is trying to pvp like that.
Multiboxing is only allowed in EVE because it inflates player numbers. It looks good on paper. Since to multibox a new account has to be created, therefore adding a "player" to the stat.
Incorrect. Multiboxing is allowed because people would do it anyways. By allowing it, you put everyone on equal standing rather than those willing to go to dodgy sites or pay for software.
I much prefer to run DED sites in lowsec with multiple characters. It cuts the time down a lot; the more time you spend in space in a site, the more time you give someone a chance to form a fleet to catch you. And on top of that, it wards off smaller groups from messing with you.
I am a subscriber of yours and I do not multbox, I have been playing a couple of months and I would sure like to know where the hell all these friends are that you mentioned in the video, Cause I sure can't find them!
I don’t think that multi-boxing is an issue within itself for the exact reasons you provided. It can, however, make players feel like they are playing at a disadvantage unless they have multiple accounts/characters. Then you start getting the ThIs GaMe Is PaY2wIn comments.
Only if you see EVE as a competition rather than a collaboration of players making a universe. EVE isn't fair. It doesn't have rules like a competitive game. You can, and absolutely should, outnumber your enemies.
As an long time gamer I would say what is your definition of Pay2Win. The original way to define it was 2 people of equal skill start the same day. One has a credit card, one does not. Does the person with the credit card have an overwhelming advantage. In the case of EVE... based on that definition the answer is most assuredly YES. however I will say because EVE is so vast its not really a problem vs some of the old MOBO games where there was no way to escape "wallet warriors."
The problem with multiboxing is high sec gate camping. It's difficult to form up a 20 man fleet to sit on a high sec gate in caracals to sui on the 200m isk badger the isk value and risk vs reward is not in it. It is not difficult nearly as difficult to have 20 alpha accounts to do the same thing that then funnel that isk into one singular account. The gate camping is the problem. Anything and everything else is game imo, but this abusive style of game play needs to have steeper penalties.
@@captainbenzie because you have to split the isk between 20 people, so their target priorities/possibilities change/their scope drastically widens. It goes from only being worth ganking 1bil isk cargo ships to 200m isk cargo ships, or some guy with a 200m mod etc. The required value of the target ship drops drastically. Also getting 20 people to sit on a high sec gate for hours on end 7 days a week to meet the dps requirement to break the tank on specific ships for the possibility of a high value module to drop is not going to be possible like it is possible for some guy doing it all solo for RMT purposes like it's their job. I have never gone into a gate camp got blown up by actual groups of people and been like.. screw those guys man. How dare they. Like the non consensual feeling I get from some mouth breathing neckbeard doing it on 20 alt characters. Just doesn't feel the same.
@@Infinite_War you seriously misunderstand gankers. They rarely give a shit about the loot. It's just about getting the kill, roaming with mates and having a laugh And besides, EVE isn't fair, especially in PvP, that's the point
@@captainbenzie I'm talking from experience. I was the high sec ganker. We picked our targets based on wether we could afford to replace our ships and it was balanced against the amount of time we had to spend regaining security status. You clearly do not know how this stuff actually works, and are using an uneducated opinion on this topic. This isn't up for debate. What I'm saying is true. You are correct about roaming with mates which is why I find it funny that you are defending multiboxers. It's kinda wild that you are pointing out one of the glaring issues with multiboxing while simultaneously defending them. It should be difficult to do things on your own so you are forced to actually interact and play with other human beings. Their is a major difference between something being designed to be difficult and to feel unfair and actual abuse. Multiboxing for the purpose of sui ganking in high sec as an isk faucet is abuse.
I don't see how. What is functionally different between getting ganked by ten ships controlled by one player, or getting ganked by ten ships controlled by separate players? And in EVE, players are still interacting with each other
@@captainbenzie The difference is the FC of the 2nd group had to convince 9 other players to fly with him (and he's probably going to split the loot with them) and how coordinated they are as a group can vary wildly from "Are they even in the same fleet?" to functionally very similar to a multi-boxer. Do you think the guy who attacked your station would be able to convince 7 other players to come with him to blow up something that takes a very long time drops a very small amount of money (that now has to be split 8 ways...)? Probably not, unless they had ulterior motives. I have 3 accounts so I'm not dead against multing or anything, but I think it's disingenuous to say it doesn't impact the community at all, because it obviously does. It's better for the game and the community if people have to team up to leverage an amount of force greater than what a single pilot can, the entire game is effectively built on top of this concept, so it's kind of weird to see people just disregard that fact. I do think you should just be able to have some drone ships on one account that can do stuff like mining and scouting, that guy you are paying to watch wormholes isn't going to do that forever, it's not exactly riveting is it? I'm sure he would be having a better time blowing stuff up with an alt hole watching, although I grant this is EVE PVE we are talking about so the difference isn't that big... 😆
@@memitim171 we've been attacked by several groups, including larger fleets of players coming after our stations too, so... Yes. I think people will roam and look for PvP in any form. For some folks, the rewards aren't the point, it's the gameplay. This is my entire point, multiboxing is literally NO DIFFERENT to a fleet of individual players. In fact, I would challenge anyone to actually tell the difference.
WoW PvP is far too movement and keypress dependent to be done smoothly even in a 2v2 - you could do multi in a BG (eg holding a position) but you'd be a liability. Eve is a perfect balance for multi - still challenging but you're highly functional at least on a small number of clients - just enough in-game "fire and forget" functions. There is a lot of grindy stuff to do and scheduling around others can be a pain - guys want pew-pew in their limited game time, not scouting duty. I'd suggest newbs run 2 accounts for awhile and see what the advantages and learning curve/difficulties are once the learn the basics. Big quality of life benefits even if you don't fight with them as a team.
Multiboxing is the worst part of this game... But it's what keep the server up& running. Without multiboxers the player count would drop drastically and sooner or later the game server will be shut down.
Why is it bad, though? What is functionally different between getting ganked by ten ships controlled by one player, or getting ganked by ten ships controlled by separate players?
Let me answer this: first, it's not so easy to get 10 people to fly with you. The other guy doesn't have that issue. Two, mostly in industry, 10 characters work for one person. This will never happen with 10 people as each person will want a piece of cake. And also because you can do the whole chain of production yourself there is no need to participate in market for components. I cant then produce much with one character if other payers don't sell their components. Mining is the worst, no point to comment. If you want to be competitive you NEED to multi box. They allowed MB before they introduced plex. Keep plex, remove MB and encourage player interaction. At the moment it is mostly restricted to PvP. Multi boxing is killing COOP play in EVE! And yes, I have strong feelings about that.
@EilthalearinKheru I think that comes down to the corp and the players in it. I play in a corp that regularly fields 8-10 mining players in our mining fleets. Some multi box miners, some multi box miners with scouts, and some multi box miners with members of the defense fleet. Others fly a single ship. This sometimes results in 10 -20 accounts being present between those players and still allows every person to get a piece of the corps profit. We don't argue over who gets more risk from the fleet. It's understood that what you bring determines what you get and everyone plays the way they want.
Day 2 player, and yeah multi-boxing sounds like a great way to take the game way too seriously and remove all the fun from it. It's a game, not a RL job with RL money.
"If he can log in and had fun, it doesn't impact you, does it?" Hell, yeah. It does. When a single player have a 10/10 site that would take 4 to 6 people, and he do it ALONE on his full fleet setup, it take the fun of others 4 to 6 people. When you go to take down a gate camp, just to realize that one person is multi-boxing with 8 ships. Yeah, that's affect me. You missed the major point on those who, like myself, don't like those who multi-boxing. And I'm not even going to talk about the economic impact they have. But EVE was suppose to be a MMO, not a single player game. And yes, CCP is turning a blind eye for it because it make them a shit load of money. And I also disagree about the ''Eve is dying'' BS. Multi-boxing is harmful because of 2 reasons. The first and more obvious one, is that it take the group focus of the game. Now, there are some activities that Multi-boxing is actually hard. But mining? Ganking? Ratting? Abyss? No. It doesn't require any human-skill to use MB. On a full battle, yeah, MB will fuck you up. But most activities doesn't require active inputs all the time. You can easily rat on a Gila or Ishtar half afk, and still do 50mil per hour. The second problem, and that one is less obvious and should be the real focus on CCP to ban MB, is the abuse of economic power. Not only for a better PC, but also for multiples omegas. Now, I understand the "need" for MB on Scout for freighters, but that should be where the ''make some friends'' part of MMORPG should come into play. Also, for all those new players, you did lie. Depending on what he want to make, he will never reach the average level of income without MB. So yeah. Multi-Boxing is real, is in the game and fill the need of some players. But in general, it is a bad habit that the community accepted as normal for lack of action of CCP.
You missed my point entirely. When you rock up to a 10/10 Site and there's a fleet in it, does it matter if that's 1 player or 6? Point is, you don't have the site. Simple as that. As for the economics, it doesn't affect the economics at all. Again, if it's a fleet of 10 ships under 1 player, or 10 ships under 10 players, the content is still getting cleared at the same rate. This, like most anti-multiboxing arguments, feels more like it comes down to: "I'm angry and jealous that someone can do something I can't". Replace any multiboxed fleet with the equivalent in actual players and NOTHING changes.
@@captainbenzie You are literally ignoring the logistics to form actual fleets here... Let's say a corp have 50 player that do Gate Camp. Multiboxing allow them to camp, with a full fledged fleet 50 different camps, and not something about 10. But hey, if you really believe that any argument that goes against yours is jealousy, good luck with life, I guess.
You SAY Eve knows and are on top of script using multiboxers; but that is not my experience - I regularly see fleets of 30+ Marauders running multiple event sites across a cluster of systems, all the 3-ship groups are doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time in each site - I have lurked, watched and reported. I have looked at the employment history of many of the players in this bot Corp, and they all joined on the same day, and all joined a newly created player corp on the same day; despite starting in different starter corps. I spent over a week lurking, and AT BEST, there were 3-4 humans operating 155 accounts across 24 hours of the day. I reported the entire Corps, and when Eve refused to do anything, reported individual accounts; I got over 50 banned, but the Bot Corp had fresh accounts up and running within days; all skilled up to operating Golems. Eve Devs cannot NOT know what is going on; but they wont do anything unless a player brings a specific and provable report. BTW, all accounts being used to multibox HAVE to be Omega if you are using a single PC; although you could get around this by using physically separate PCs, with one account on each.
Common misconception in gaming: "I see cheaters so the Devs aren't doing anything" Reality is, bans happen in mass blocks. To ban individually and constantly is insanely high effort and makes it easy for scripters and botters to react with updates. Instead, you do a ban sweep. And CCP does this. And it works. Yes, the botters eventually come back, but it hits them in their wallet more.
@@captainbenzie I have seen many legit multiboxers, running as many as 12 ships; but when you have 30+ Golems all called "Golem", how do you effectively control them without illegal scripts? Not even "Golem1, Gollem2" etc, just "Golem".
i have run 8 pilots at a time and im fully agents multiboxing. losing a station to 1 guy with with alot of account is hard to swallow .it runes the eco gives one person god like power and is a missive unfair advantage .
It's only an advantage of you look at EVE externally as a competition. Firstly, EVE isn't a competition. You shouldn't be comparing yourself to anyone - measure your progress against where YOU were before, not who you find. Secondly, how is that any different from losing a station to a fleet of multiple guys? You still lost the station. And arguably, it's going to be easier to beat a multiboxer since it's one dude managing so many accounts at once.
@@captainbenzie The only management required is getting each ship in the fleet to launch drones, after that you get them all to assist one target, your fc/main and that ship will be the one that locks and tackles everything. For movement, you are mainly just using warp to location and then just closing with your tackle ship. 95% of it is done on just one screen.
I did the same thing with making a single character who can do and fly alot, but took years to create. I would also say that progressively we all start with one character, learning the game and deciding our path. Once comfortable with the game then you decide to either abstain and stick to the tried and true single account living; I'd honestly recommend living with a active corp, solo living is rough in the social sense. Nice to have friendly back up haha... Or how deep you'd like to multibox, I'd like to recommend that keep it small, It's so flipping nice to have cloaky eye's while making money or haul your stuff while you are out on a fleet. Requirements for multibox is pretty silly, I think it is a eager desire to further press power projection.
i was just watching the scope and brought it up that i would so love to be completely into eve but the multiboxing just ruins it. i cant do anything out in the world cause 2 'players' will show up no matter what. literal pay 2 win. they dont even have to be that geared they just have more equipment slots and disable you from getting away
That's utter bullshit, sorry. I live in wormholes. I play on a single account. If you're doing pve content and someone warps to you for a fight, you are an idiot if you stay. They are PvP fit, you are not. Stay frosty, avoid fights unless you're actively looking for them - in which case you should be in a PvP fit. As for "pay to win", what if that second ship is a friend? Why can't you have a friend with you too? EVE is an MMO. If you're playing solo, that's your decision, but you cannot get upset that a group of players in an MMO can do more than a solo player can - that's the entire point of the game.
I run a corp (75 people, peaked at 85! Still growing and all ~), I run 27 accounts so do think I got something to contribute! Generally my stance is: play what you find fun! if that is a single account, all the power to you, is that multi boxing all the power to you too. Do you want to multibox at my scale? that is the only moment I say think twice. It is hard work and id advice against it unless you really freaking want to. Do I think a second or third account is insanely helpful? yes, but not required. Heck much further past 3 and you gotta already ask yourself question tbh. But again priority one is enjoy the game how you want to enjoy it. It is possible.
It is true that when you get past the tipping point of multiple accounts, you are always looking for the dudes in the white coats carrying a butterfly net to come give you a snug-fitting white coat of your own that allows you to hug yourself all day while sitting in a padded room...heeheehahahoho!
I agree with a lot of your comments. I play one account. When I joined a large NullBloc, they basically said it was a requirement for me to have a cyno alt in order to play with capitals. I left, never to return. Don't tell me how I can have fun in a game. Its a game. While its true that some people have fun trying to squeeze the most efficiency out of an area of play, its also fun to just fly around a single account and make friends. I would much rather sit in a belt with other people, than with myself.
I have two accounts with three characters. Now, I don’t have the time I used to, as I used to have 3 or 4 more accounts and would have alpha miners on them. But these days I only use two characters. One is my main and the other is skilled out for an orca and compression. I’ve never used more than one combat ship though.
For me Multiboxing entirely kills the immersion of the game. As an MMO Sandbox I have always imagined MY character with his own job/identity in the universe doing his thing that I trained/equiped for, and avoiding or engaging the challenges he can in this dangerous environment. The idea of a big scary universe is so much more amazing when you are an individual there being part of a big picture. Bigger challenges would require people to search for groups to do. Multiboxing just makes me feel that I'm minmaxing a silly meaningless videogame.
Thing is, in EVE, you are an immortal demigod. We have characters in the lore, like the Broker, who were known to run multiple clones simultaneously. Ironically, multiboxing is technically supported by the in-game lore.
The effeciency that multiboxing lends to one player is cheating the moment they interact with another player. The advantage multiboxing gives in that interaction destroys the community and the perception of needing skill to play the game. Its a corrosive blight on all mmo's. As to Wow, I've been in arena's that were dominated by one person with 5 accounts, all keybound to one keyboard with scripts. It kills the game.
I think the big distinction here is the perception that all multiboxers use other utilities or programs to assist their control over all their accounts. That guy from the video who ran 8 accounts almost assuredly was for him to be effective in combat with that many. For me, I run 6-8 accounts for mining and I don't use anything extra besides the game client and a few screens. 2 computers to run the accounts and I'm constantly alt-tabbing to move ore around and target new rocks when they go down. I manually control all of my accounts. Even when I do multibox in PvE, I'm only using 2 accounts in combat with 1 following to salvage. In your scenario, I would agree that that player would be cheating but not in mine.
@@captainbenzie Functionally there is no difference, your're dead. My point is the interaction is different when you are interacting with a live person vs a/the enviroment. Obviously we disagree on this. And I'm not trying to persuade you. But can you deny that this issue deters people from playing? That it lowers the enjoyment of the larger majority of players? The skill to multibox is real and yes they are paying for their accounts. Cool, but they create a toxic enviroment that real or not gives a perception of unfairness.
@@risingangelttv I think you got the gist of my point. Vs the game I have no issue with multi boxing. Its when its used against real people that I think its ethically wrong. Capt B mentioned that there is no way to get rid of it within the game, fair enough. That doesn't mean I'm required to think a multi boxer pvp'er isn't a dirtbag.
I agree. Multiboxing is not necessary or required to play Eve effectively and have fun. That said, I also don’t have a problem with it, with the possible exception of the incident you described where one player nearly single-handedly wiped out an entire fleet. That seems OP.
I have one account that I keep omega on. I have a couple of others to do specific things I don't want to skill my main on. You made good points, and I feel it offers more content to hunt if you look at the other side of things in LS or NS
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? The issue with EE isn't multiboxing. It's power creep.
I am also active with five omega accounts in the so-called multiplexing approach and do not think that this falls under "cheating". This approach is simply an alternative to gameplay mechanics. I can fulfil the requirements in the respective context and have much fun playing the game! There is an evident approach on the part of CCP to support this accordingly. And yes, controlling these accounts in challenging situations is quite intense and requires a certain degree of skill (which the game as a single-account-mmo has yet to plan for). Anyway, I enjoy the game and have no problem with my approach ...
Hi Benzie! Nice video, as always. I'm sort of on the fence about multiboxing on the whole, but I think there's one point worth making that always seems to go unsaid in discussions on the subject. It has to do with the fact that EVE has certain activities that are generally regarded as "boring but necessary." I think you noted lighting a cyno as an example- it's absolutely critical to access certain aspects of the game, but once it's done, it's done, and there's really not much more for that character / player to do. The problem I see with how much CCP has leaned into multiboxing (at least specifically with regard to this point) is that... EVE is a game! And moreover, it's a product designedfrom bottom to top by CCP and completely within their creative control. There's nothing about the physical laws of the universe that make it so that a cyno has to be lit in order to do X, Y, Z; CCP could change the game to eliminate it if they woke up tomorrow and decided they wanted to. In real life, this isn't the case- sometimes you just have to be the one holding dad's flashlight while he fixes the car even though you'd rather be doing something else. It's a small point, but I think it speaks to a dynamic which lets CCP off the hook for ensuring that content in EVE is persistently.... fun! As I said, it is after all a game. Most activities should at least be some form of fun. And I get that it's a sandbox and a lot of the fun to be had in EVE is through meta content and making the content yourself as you see fit. But that doesn't mean that activities should be dull. Many EVE players joke about "winning" EVE because for many playing in a "efficient" fashion turns into a second job. Nothing requires that to be the case except for CCP's game design choices. So I guess ultimately where I come out is that it is, and will always be, CCP's job to engage in "fun balancing," for lack of a better term. In other words, they should always be working to ensure that all roles and all activities in the game provide some level of fun, and aren't just "boring but necessary."
come now. were multiboxing banned most null and low corps would see their ranks thinned by half or more (not to mention what would happen to in-game player counts)...
Horde encourages multi boxing to swell fleet numbers with additional rewards for fleet participation. But I’m not sure I’ve heard of anyone requiring it.
Completely agree, it is a game and it's meant to be enjoyed, not viewed as a chore. I find pleasure in mining azure plagioclase, just looking at my ship bringing in those rocks, and then selling them in the market. Most nights than not, that is all I do, in my one and only account.
The only true time i've ever seen a multibox requirement has been if you want to fly capitals for some large blocks, and its just that your capital flyer is typically an alt. So that escalations can happen more rapidly if needed. I know in the past before keepstars titans were basically "coffins" because you couldnt dock them so you had to have another toon if you wanted to play. But that was back before titans were so prolific. I run 3 accounts normally just so i can use 2 toons as bridgers and another in a blockade runner or 2 mining and 1 in station as defence against belt rats.. I know all of these things could be accomplished with a corp but real life means i step away from eve for long periods of a time. Normally a few months so i try not to be burdensome to corporations by being inactive
I haven’t ever multiboxed but I think it would definitely make the game more engaging and it would get harder to manage with scale. Besides, miners harvesting ludicrous amounts of resources just makes the stuff I buy cheaper, so I’m not complaining.
I'm a sweaty loser without friends. I admit that lol. I plex my game by farming isk in game. But i also suck at the game and having a 15bil invoice to keep them up also eats a lot of time per month. But it's also the way for me to play in a wh with 2 accounts and feel safe to do things while my corp mates aren't online. I'm socially awkward, so finding like minded people is hard. So even the 3 accounts i have in nullsec end up being me, myself and i because i find it hard to connect with people. I have been playing eve since 2011 and i still love the game thanks to being the sweaty loser without friends (love this description sorry 😂). It enabled me to enjoy the game a lot more because in the beginning, i wanted to do it all, as many people do when they start eve! But training everything on 1 account takes a long time. So i dedicated 1 account to frigates, destroyers and cruisers. Then 1 account to carriers (when they still were fun) and 1 account to batteships. Then wanted to do wh life but needed to do so paying my omega with isk. So i got 2 new characters to do exactly that. And now i can enjoy a lot of things in eve without having any friends! I understand people thinking they need more then 1 account but with friends and patience u really do not!
True multiboxing isn't particularly to replace other players. It's about economy of scale. Here's an example:
You want to build a mining fleet - say 12 hulks and a links porpoise + hauling DST/Orca - total 14 accounts.
Those 14 accounts will cost you say 2.5b each per month - so to plex all 14 will cost ~35b.
If you're mining R64, you'll be making about 4-5b an hour - so per character - that's 350mil an hour. There are ALOT of activities that can make more isk/hr than that per character. Most of them (abyssals for example) require more 'Actions Per Minute' (APM). T6 Abyssals are maybe 600m/hour - but they're high APM so you can't run many of them simultaneously.
On the above example, you're going to need to mine R64 for 8 hours a month to cover your plex cost. Because each character is mining the same amount, it doesn't matter how many you have - If you have 5 chars - it still takes you 8 hours to cover costs; it's the same if you had 50 chars. The difference is the rate at which you can make money after PLEX costs have been covered. (Obviously, if you mine less valuable ore, this 8 hours increases)
That's where economy of scale comes in and this applies to ANY multiboxing PVE activity (Pochven Flashpoints, Pirate FW farming, Mining, StormBringer/Smartbomb ratting, Multiboxing C5-6 wormhole sites/Incursions).
In PVE what you're looking for is effectively the highest ISK making activity that has low enough APM to be scaled up. And it varies across your activities - a good example of this is Pochven Sites vs Mining.
Pochven Sites - Each site has a soft limit where after you have more than 15 characters in the site, the reward drops significantly. So if you're running 12-15 characters, it's a good option. If you have 30 accounts however, you'd have to be running 2 sites at the same time with 2 separate fleets (which is much more difficult because it doubles the APM).
Mining - More accounts in this scenario simply means emptying ore holds/compressing more often. A hulk will need it's ore hold emptying every 2 cycles (approx every 140 seconds - 2 laser cycles). With a set of 12 hulks, it's going to take an experienced multiboxer maybe 30 seconds to empty and compress the ore from all of them. Once the ore holds are full, you have until the end of the next laser cycle (70 seconds) to empty the holds before the lasers turn off because the hold is full. So effectively, you could double the amount of hulks to 24, taking you 60 seconds to empty and still leaving you with another 10 seconds before you need to repeat the process.
If you want to go beyond that, you need a ship with a larger ore hold to give you a bigger timeframe for emptying/compressing the holds - like the Mackinaw - the Mackinaw will mine about 30% slower than a hulk in terms of M3/hour. In this scenario, going from 24 hulks -> 36 mackinaws isn't worth it. You're only mining slightly more, but doing alot more work. But if you're going from 24 hulks -> 48 Mackinaws, it becomes worth it - BUT to run that many clients you need ALOT of RAM, VRAM and Processing power. So it then becomes a matter of working out what your PC can handle and balancing that against the optimal setup for your chosen activity and APM capability.
Source: I've been multiboxing for nearly 15 years, and taught many corp/alliancemates the above. As you said in the video it's about the level at which you want to play the game - some of my guys have come into the alliance with a subcap main, maybe a dread alt and a cyno account; to a point where they wind up with 15-20 accounts and multiple supercaps within a 12 month period.
On needing an epic gaming rig - this is somewhat a myth. If you run in low graphics, and put non-essential clients on 'super-potato mode' (like barges for mining) you can run a lot on an average rig. Until recently i was running 15 clients on the PC i built in 2011:
CPU: Intel i7-2600k,
Memory: 32GB DDR3,
GPU: AMD R9 290x 4GB.
I'm now running:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Memory: 64GB DDR4
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060 TI
Hope this helps put some first hand experience out there o7
I have, on more than 1 occasion, had an alarm set to wake me at night, so I could log in and pop a cyno so "the freighter guy" could move shit around.
Lmao awesome!!
doing gods work
Alarm clock ops were the rule, at least back in the day, hell I remember setting my alarm just so I didn’t have hours long gaps in my skill training.
@@johnpatz8395 same, naturally. I was at fanfest when they announced the skill que. Roaring applause.
This games community is crazy 😂 I love it
I don’t mind it in mining and I’ve never heard the rocks complain (they do talk if you listen long enough).
hahaha... I talk to my drones.
Lol 😂
What do you think of the guys triple boxing frigates in T6 abyss
Rocks are friends!!!
@@sir_slimestone3797 You defo need some thinking and reaction and it is not so easy.. as it sounds. =] (not one of them btw. I can't multibox in abyss, to much work to do and I am to old for this.)
There is a difference between someone with multiple accounts to move and scout for their Capital Ship and someone with 10 accounts ganking in high sec.
I personally don't think there is. What is the functional difference between 10 players ganking you on their own accounts and one player ganking you on 10 accounts?
@@captainbenzie the difference is there is a need for 10 player that need to cooperate, then one person mulitiboxing and ganking, I have played mmorpg for now over 20 years and i have always looked at it as cheating and makes a bad community, including people leaving since a good deal of players look at is as cheating.
@@frodehorgen2519 100% agree. its banned in 99% of games for a reason...
@@captainbenzie it is the same as bring a gun to a fist fight and say it is fair.
since there are just one player on both sides yet one have 10 ships and there other just one. it is one of the most idiotic arguments i have ever heard within gaming, if you cant see the detrimental effect this can have on a game especially pvp, then you have no clue of fair gaming and sportsmanship.
@@frodehorgen2519 okay, so the ten guys ganking you is also fair??
This is EVE, NOTHING is fair, and that's the point. If you get ganked by a fleet of ten guys, come back with eleven friends. Warfare isn't fair. Piracy isn't fair. You think the privateers in the Carribbean only picked on armed navy vessels?
You think that the nullsec blocs message ahead to ask what they're bringing, agree to a "points value" and set tournament rules for their wars??
I think you've massively misunderstood EVE if you think fairness EVER comes into it. It's not about fair, it's about swinging the odds into your favour.
Get some friends, band together and be more than any one person can be. Swing the odds to your favour, or stop complaining.
Multiboxing changes nothing. But most backwards of your argument is that I'd rather be ganked by one guy piloting ten ships, then ten guys individually. I think I personally stand more of a chance in the former 😉
When i see 20k+ "players" online, my first tought is "oh 5k people playing"
Yeah very discouraging
I Play the game since 2011. Never multi-boxed - Just one account
Admire the skill it takes to control multiple vessels
Absolutely the same (except 2012). I don't even want to try it 😂
And yes, I am flying capitals. There is always a good friend willing to assist
i admire the subscription to that random discord that allows them to do that with any degree of competence.
CCP made the launcher with multiboxers in mind, they don't turn a blind eye to it, they encourage it.
its a bulk of their sales
They've encouraged it since like 06 when they started running Power of 2 discounts. Course at that time, multiboxing was literally being a person with an expensive internet connection and 2 physical computers to play on.
@@Nikarus2370 no it wasnt. i was mutli boxing on my gaming laptop in 2006 so a moderate desktop could run 3 or 4 clients at the time.
@@epeeypen Yes, and lets do a little math here. If someone wanted to multibox like a mining fleet of their own, say 10 toons... how many mid tier desktops would that have taken?
Additionally for a lot of people who PVP boxed, they did still run separate machines. Like IDK how expensive stuff was for you. But when I got into multiboxing, and wanted to be able to see 2 instances of the game up at once... it was just cheaper to buy another computer at Walmart and run copy 2 on that... than it was to buy a graphics card that would display 2 instances of the game well. (Also as I was also playing WOW at the time, I could multibox a pocket healer with the separate tower and avoid their anti-boxing rules)
@@Nikarus2370 i am unaware of anyone who did that. I have been playing for nearly 20 years. most people just got two monitors or even three monitors. you did not need multiple machines to run the game up to 3 or 4 clients. yes when it got into 10 clients you might need a beefer computer but not a super gaming computer or anything like that. now for wow you would for sure need two computers
So im going to speak out of my experience directly as a person whom has been attempting to play eve online without. Im also a relatively new player with little experience so theres that but this was my impression.
As i was exploring and starting esphecially doing exploration and wormholing the shear ammount of isk generation that would be possible had i just 1 more ship at my disposal without having to share the loot completely changed the dynamic of isk production to the point where i found it to be the approach i would have to take to be compedetive with all that entails for both my financial resources irl and ingame. I feelt in a large part that i had to multibox basically and fork up the irl money to train up an extra account, and i gotta be honnest it was quite of a mood killer.
My Corp leader has 50 Omega accounts with 3 characters each. He's able to build entire Dreadnoughts single handedly.
That's amazing and I don't see it as a bad thing!
I do that with 6 accounts =)
I just built a rorqual actually.
If they have fun, sure 😂
WHAT ALYAN CAN DO THAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The general need to multibox for Jump freighters is one thing that really put me off of Eve. I had thought to progress into them to help establish a remote industrial set-up and supply chain, but after training into them for a couple months I more fully learned that the process requires a second player to light up a beacon.
My playstyle was a bit too casual to justify getting another account up, and the issue with trying to find a reliable and trustworthy corp mate willing to abide by my schedule didn't seem to be too feasible. I think that character may have actually finished training to fly one, but I scrapped the idea of getting one.
I think Multiboxing is one of the most interesting and most destructive game mechanics in EVE.
How is it destructive? What is functionally different between getting ganked by ten ships controlled by one player, or getting ganked by ten ships controlled by separate players, for example?
@@captainbenzie...hello Captain...how can I do multiboxing and what is the correct way of doing it?...you think you can please make a tutorial?..🤔
@@captainbenzie The difference is that the individual gets to keep everything they gank and whatever they lose is barely felt as it is spread across 10 characters whereas 10 separate players have to split loot but ship losses fall on the head of the loser which makes trying to convince 10 people that the activity is economically viable for 1/10th of the take damn near impossible while Johnny No-friends can gank like a champ without having to take it to a steering committee.
@@theamazingwesbrown3290 I agree with you... dunno, the end result is the same but the consequences are different
@@guyguyver7552 YES PLZ DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The issue stems with how slow paced the game is. When I started doing missions, I pretty quickly noticed there is so much downtime that I could be doing this on two or three characters simultaneously. And that's what I do now.
And multiboxing will ensure that all future content remains that way.
@@meowmixmcmeowster1370 Thats the biggest problem the game now has to cater to multiboxing or they will loose too much revenue, and in return we get a more dulled down solo player experience
@@meowmixmcmeowster1370 how?
@@thegoldenbunny4020 give some examples, cause that sounds like complete horse shit at the moment
Here's my take: multiboxing is the worst issue in EVE. It should be banned. Having multiple accounts/characters is fine, having more than one active simultaneously is not.
Why do I think multiboxing is that bad? EVE is an MMO. It was designed to require players to cooperate to achieve larger goals. Multiboxing is a way to cheat / work around this design. Not only does it mean that fewer people will be playing together and interacting with each other. It also means that one person will be profiting way more than intended by the game design.
Let's take industry/mining as an example. In a large mining fleet, everyone will want a cut of the resources mined. A single person multiboxing gets all the resources for themselves AND denies other players the chance to obtain those resources. How is that not cheating?
Let's look at pvp. A multiboxer will always be more efficient than a group of real people. Flying a bunch of alts doesn't require communication or teamwork. Giving commands to x ships simultaneously means they won't fumble with their controls, fire at a wrong target, fly out of optimal range, etc. The loot, once again, goes to one person as opposed to being split up between members of the fleet.
I've also seen instances of a single person playing both sides in FW. A couple of alts on one side, a couple of alts on the other side endlessly killing each other, farming insane amounts of LP and denying other people content.
The list goes on and on. Seeing instances of this happening feels very discouraging for me as a player. Like, if I don't want to bother flying 10 accounts, I will never have a chance to achieve anything as easily or quickly as multiboxers do.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? I don't think anyone could actually tell the difference, and that's why it's weird to me that folks get upset by it. It's why it FEELS like the anger is a perceived jealousy rather than anything meaningful. And I don't multibox.
@@captainbenzie well let's think about it. In your example one guy can decide to go ruin someone's day and easily do it by controlling 10 accounts. Without multiboxing he would first have to find 9 other guys who also want to ruin someone's day, fleet up, coordinate with them, etc.
Without multiboxing there would be way fewer ganks. Just because it's not as easy to pull off when it requires actual communication and multiple people willing to do the thing who are online at the same time and so on.
Back to my point: multiboxing is a way to work around the design of the game. Doing things that one player should not be able to do.
@@slumberling You underestimate the skill needed to control 10 accounts successfully.
I wouldn't play if i was unable to use alts to move my JF around on my own.
@@captainbenziebecause 10 players need to communicate and work together.
Even if you say the concerns in a whiny voice it doesn't change that fact.
Example: organize a birthday party inviting 10 people. Zero people in the entire world think that getting 10 people to gather at the same time and place and bring a present is equal in effort to one person alone buying themselves 10 presents. There's No comparison.
It's so dang simple and the disingenuous whiny voice nonsense just makes *you* look bad.
CCP isn't looking the other way with regard to multiboxing. They actively state that it is allowed in their TOS and right below that it says you cannot play two accounts at the same time unless both are Omega accounts. They go even further and encourage it. When you try to play with two accounts and one is not omega, they spawn a pop-up that essentially says, you are more than welcome to do this, but only if both accounts are Omega.
They allow and encourage it, I believe, for one simple reason. That is, if multiboxing is against TOS then most people won't do it. However some and perhaps even many will, they cannot withstand the temptation. CCP is well aware that bans and indeed all other "anti-cheat" software measures are reactionary in nature as well as easily circumventable. This of course means that there will always be people availing themselves of this advantage whilst the general player base are largely hapless victims, and even those in the know are powerless to negate the advantage without themselves going rogue.
Therefore, they have, I believe rightly, decided that it will be allowed under the TOS, so that the opportunity to exploit it is available to everyone, and of course, comes without the threat of penalty.
Obviously it is good for the bottom line as well, which for a niche product is always a concern, and that is probably the true motivation. The ability to generate additional revenue from any given consumer is always a plus. I don't need to attract new customers if I can get the ones I have to buy more.
Exactly this, and I see it as having no actual negative on players, like me, who choose not to
Coming from someone who is in a small corp multi boxing helps us continue to do content on dead nights while we build numbers and recruitment, if your not using a way to make it so all your clients copy your key inputs, i see no issue with it, but seeing suicide gankers who is clearly key input setup, ya no that should be banned or dealt with accordingly.
i fly with 14 toons (all Omega thru Plex) and mine belts solo in a couple of hours. Also do system patrol when there's no ice or rare ore to mine around. can't see any problem with multiboxing, the bots are.
Maybe the real multiboxers are the friends we made along the way
I like your channel a bit better
@@MrHATING101 me too!! :) Loru is the best..
oh hiii love ur vids
Hey! You look familiar! ;)
the answer is YES
this is the final nail in the coffin for a new player. he finally realizes how small of a fish he is, that he is there to feed the whales/nolifers, and that to even have 0.0001% chance to compete he will need to run 5 eve online acounts. and ccp is ok with this, because that is their business model.
I massively disagree. If you're trying to play EVE, an experiential game, competitively, you're going to have a bad time. New players should be teaming up, getting into a corp, and recognising that him being a small fish is the POINT of EVE. You're one player in a massive, living, ever-growing and expanding universe. Your actions can, and do, have consequences, but there's no leaderboard. Nobody is "winning" at EVE over anyone else. Focus on having fun, living your story in game. That's what it's about.
Multiboxing has ruined the pirate FW experience for players with single accounts. You play as is intended and start capping a plex then just before the end someone with 15 Algos warps in and essentially deprives you of any meaningful reward. Worse still, they multibox a group on both sides of FW meaning that if you are in one of the larger plexes with their group, they send in a fleet from the opposite side and only target you so you are removed.
Personally I think it should be capped at 3 omega accounts simultaneously
I multibox 6 accounts for mining. I'll generally only run 2 for other PvE content though and most often it's something like my scanning character probes out a combat site and warps my PvE combat pilot to the site then follows him in to salvage the room while the combat toon moves onto the next one. Sometimes I'm I'll run 2 combat pilots for lvl 4 missions with a third account to salvage behind the first 2. I've tried running 2 missile boats and 2 drone boats, assisting the drones to the missile boats and orbiting them. The complexity of running multiple accounts in combat is MUCH higher than running multiple miners where all you have to do is dump into the orca and compress the ice/ore. That guy running 8 accounts in PvP and being effective is insane. Not many people can do that.
Is that you M1SF1T ?
@@davidnobular9220 nope.
@@risingangelttv Sorry...thought it might have been.
Yes, that's the way It is. We do things in repeat activities that repeats and nobody would do as It becomes boring.
AS long as they're not using something that copies inputs, that shit can get really busted I feel like.
It's cancer, the idea is to be solo or rely on friends, not be half the universe. Drastically unbalances the game, true solo players should be able to hire npc mercs to even things out, since banning multboxing would probably kill eve.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
EVE isn't fair.
@@captainbenzie Wow, i really need the crayons here...
When's the last time you managed to get 10 people to do what you want, when you want? and how easy was that?
If you were "Meant" to control multiple characters, you'd have been able to from the start.
Multiboxing straight up nullifies half the aspects of eve, you're playing a different game.
The only real solution is to split the server into solo and multiboxers.
@@crankyboris You don't seem to understand the mechanics of EVE Online. You ARE able to have several accounts on your launcher and you ARE able to run them simultaneously when you have Omega. It doesn't nullify anything. But you seem like one of those jealous people, just like Benzie described in his video.
@@crankyboris Ok, let's do that then. Split the game servers and force people to pick one or the other with the caveat that you can NEVER transfer between the two. But, when the "solo" servers don't generate enough ISK in game and real-life Icelandic Kronners to justify keeping them running, don't come-a-crying!
Multiboxing destroyed economy in WOW. I know from fact because i have been playing for since 2005!
Same thing here. If you have one guy mining on 8 accounts at the same time that means he is pumping marketplace 8x faster then he would be able to do if he is not multiboxing.
That is dropping the price for which item can be sold due to saturation of the marketplace thus others who are not multiboxing would essentially earn less.
This is factually inaccurate and the stats don't add up. If you had eight players instead of one player on eight ships, the market would be "being pumped" at the same rate.
That's not how market forces work, especially in an environment where drop rates etc can be tweaked by the developers.
Once again, this simply proves my point that one guy with ten ships is NO DIFFERENT to ten guys with one ship.
@@captainbenzie but it actually is. There is quate a differece between 1 person mining order while controlling all the miners at the same time and 8 players that might mine ore at the same time.
Like I said multiboxing destroyed mining and herbalism in Wow especially because one nod could be tagged and it would despawn after certain amount of time.
This is the same, if you have 1 player doing mining at the same time on 8 characters is not the same as 8 possible miners that would mine at all one point.
You are even said in the video, if imagine now that you don't have that multiboxer, would there be a noticeable difference?
Love most of your videos and you have been a great teacher of Eve for me so far (I just started a few weeks ago).
It seems we have vastly different views on this particular topic though.
A apt metaphor: I choose to play Monopoly with friends. When my friend is handing out the initial game pieces, I ask for 4 pieces to move on the board instead of 1 piece. When asked why, I say that I will be playing the same game with 4 different pieces. At the end of the game, I win...but did I really win? Or did I just make the game less fun for myself and those around me?
There are reasons why multiboxing is a no-go in most MMOs.
This is a false analogy. EVE isn't a competition. It doesn't have rules about fairness.
It's a collaboration where players work together to achieve great things, where players work together to create an astonishing universe.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately? Neither are fair. That's the point.
Multi box is about working alone. So if eve is about building an universe together, those two things are incompatible.
Also, who is going to be ganked more often. The guy who has 5 alts ready to tackle any aggression or lone miner trying to earn some isk?
There is so much against multi box I will have to compile a wall of text and then post here.
@@EilthalearinKheru again, so find friends. Your main issue here is that you're trying to solo an MMO.
@@captainbenzie no i do not. I am in a Corp, thank you. It still feels bad when you get killed by someone because he paid more. There is no way around that.
Multiboxing is good......botting is not.
Yes, this.
Correct. But also remove drone assist.
Brings multi boxing to a reasonable state
100% require all the clicks (NO SCRIPT)
Yeah, no fun to die to 7 ships of 1 guy multiboxing, then you're solo.
18:02 "Stop playing eve as a competition" - Someone who lost the plot
Once upon a time all the women wore dresses, then one girl wore a skirt. Now I see cheeks on a regular basis...
These are basic market forces, they can't be beaten.
If you live life constantly competing with everyone around you, you're going to end up sad, alone, and burned out.
EVE is a game, something played to relax and unwind from work. Compare to yourself, how far you've come compared to how you were, but it's pointless trying to compete with everyone else.
If you aren't multiboxing, you aren't playing the game right.
I say this as someone who used to say that I would never multibox. The longer you play, the more accounts you acquire.
12 years of playing, one of the largest content creators in EVE, but I'm "not playing right" because I've never multiboxed?
Bro that's the point. It's not necessary and it's weird to make such a big thing of it. It's beneficial, sure, and it can replace the need to have people in a fleet. But some of us are lucky enough to have those players.
@@captainbenzie I'm not saying there aren't some outliers, but in general the more you grow in the game, the more you typically want/need to use other accounts.
When I moved to nullsec, I had one account. After a short while of running a vni for isk, I decided that I wanted to spin up another account for more isk generation. The second account became a emergency cyno alt when my main got into a carrier (thanks to cyno changes). Some time after that I decided that I wanted to run BLOPs fleets, which to do so efficiently would require a couple of other accounts for hunting targets. Then I moved to J space.. oh boy.. I've added a 5th account for boosting and additional PI. I've also got 2 other alpha accounts.. one for seeds, and one for wormhole rollers. Do I need half of that really? No.. but if I didn't my gameplay would be affected in ways which I would see negatively.
In comparison to some of my other corp mates, the accounts I have is laughable. A few of my corp mates run entire eos fleets consisting of 15+ accounts.
Do you know how many accounts Olmeca Gold had when he was operating in delve?
You can absolutely play this game with one account depending on your play style. We don't want to turn anyone away from EVE by telling them that they have to be able to afford multiple accounts to play obviously. The depth of the game already does a good job of deterring players.. I mean you could write a book on solo pvp alone. :D
if you are mainly miner and industrialists, it makes no sense to sit in a belt with only one miner, when 3 miners makes you 3x more isk for same time spent. your also bit off when it comes to the 3 toons for doing mining, reprocessing and so on, beacuse the skill needed to make you good miner, are also the exact same skills needed that give you good reprocessing skills.
considering the average industrialist and miner run 3 accounts i belive, if that wasent the case, it would drop the amount of ore mined by atleast 70%, and if that was the case, what would you think would happend to all mineral prices? they would sky rocket, and make everything in the game exceptional expensive. for multiboxing in PVP, you can be somewhat efficient if you multibox 2 ships with the same role, butthat'ss also the limit for 98% of the player base. so having 1 guy trying to multibox 8 toons should be a walk in the park to kill compared to going up ageinst 8 ships controlled by 8 different players
Theoretically, but that's not always the case as that multiboxer showed us! But yeah, this agrees with my point that one player on ten accounts is the same as ten players on one account each.
I don't have an issue with multiboxers. I have an issue with botters and people who use scripts or automation. And it really just comes down to the fact that I don't like cheaters. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes but when you have 6-10 tools all with the same name minus some extra numbers and they all perform the same action at the same time... Your botting and unfortunately you're not going to convince me otherwise. And you're actually cheating. That I have a problem with. If you're running 3 tools performing different roles at the same time and you have the skill to do so efficiently without scripts and automation programs, we're cool and I honestly respect the hell out of that.
Yeah, scripting and automation is against the TOS and often results in bans. And CCP do ban a LOT of bots
cant find your corp whats the ticker ?
Multiboxing kills the part of the game that is supposed to require community and teamwork. If CCP doesn't care about multiboxing then they should remove the requirement to have a second pilot. Get rid of cynos or change them. get rid of repairs. Let a single pilot just control a fleet of drone ships. Eve is and RPG, you have a fleet of pilots a tank a dps a healer its just that people dont really play like that (which is more of a failure of game design). If CCP wants people to multibox then they should just let pilots control little fleets.
You are missing the point that multibox stuff is stuff that is intended to be done with another pilot. Part of the intended challenge is to have to find another pilot to team up with. The intention of the game is to pilot a ship not an entire fleet.
If a guy multiboxing 8 ships wipes out a belt or system of all the good ore it can be prettty shitty for someone who is just solo mining. When almost no one is going to be able to get a handful of individual pilots to get together to mine
How would you even tell? How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
It feels like people are getting "jealous" that others can multibox when they can't. Functionally, there's no difference. It doesn't affect those of us who don't multibox. Yet people get weirdly defensive on it.
@@captainbenzie I am only referring to mining in HS as that's all I do. But I think functionally there is a difference. Because miners multi-box more resources are harvested and thus the economy is stable. Looking around the EVE community there isn't a whole lot of people who enjoy mining. I think if tomorrow CCP stripped away multi-boxing the economy would absolutely look like a dumpster fire. If 50% of "miners" are multi-boxing divide the resources available by whatever you think the average is for accounts. Now... all those shiny T2 parts and ships.. triple or quadruple the price because the materials are scarce and more expensive. As far as "eating belts" IDK where this is happening but I am in the Genesis constellation and I can take you to almost any system and the belts are 95% untouched and devoid of players.
@@captainbenzie the fact that the odds of getting ganked by ten pilots is much less than the odds of getting ganked by one player with several ships. I am not really talking about getting ganked as much as I am talking about having to have a player scout for you or cyno or something.
@@captainbenzie Dude why do you keep repeating the same sentence in response to more and more answers about the negative sides multiboxing can have? As if multiboxing only comes into play in the area of ganking
Meanwhile, many have already written that coordinating 10 players is also a form of challenge that is completely eliminated for the multiboxer. Furthermore, a multiboxer can also completely undermine the chain in an economy. Where before 2-3 people are involved in an end product (and something falls off for everyone on the side) is thus also obsolete
@@VSJohnnyVulture So you don't think coordinating 10 accounts is a challenge then? You've obviously never tried it.
Downside with multiboxing is see the amount of people logged in (30k) and then think about how many are multi boxed . Other trouble is some people are not that social and have trouble getting in corps and do stuff with the corp.
I had a friend that does t6 abyssal in frigates using multiboxing.
He can get billions a day. It's crazy
It's a skill in and of itself
Thats a pretty high skill/stress activity though, I did lvl5s like that for awhile, its fun but I burn out.
Set up 4 accounts for pi and other indy processes, but reducing to one account now. Simply do not have time for the processes and never was capable of plexing any account. Multiboxing can make you independent yet lonely in space. Will dump all indy and switch to pvp now. Thoughtful vid. Awesome!
legit multi boxing is a straight up skill, if not automated - more power to em
Exactly this
One thing to keep in mind (because it was kinda hedged in the video) is that it's against the terms of service to multibox with alpha accounts. You can't even have an omega account and an alpha account running at the same time: if you have multiple accounts running simultaneously, they must be omega accounts. I realize this isn't an argument for or against multiboxing as an idea, but it's a critical piece of context that isn't obvious.
This ⬆️
Conscript your parents or siblings to mine for you, worked well for me 😂
That's funny because it let me do it ..... one account was on steam another was on the stand alone . Maybe it's because they were on different emails also .
@@MrHATING101 let's do, yes. Another thing when they check out the IP adress.
Just having one played well is pretty tough, kudos to them. If they can handle it and they're paying for it, none of my business.
I'll be honest. If I could pull it off, I'd fly a pair of Logistics. Finding a likeminded logie wingman is not an easy task.
I'm not angry, I'm sad. When you look at that there are 30,000 players on the server your heart cheers up, then the cold truth: there are only 9-10 thousand of us, the rest are alts. Smaller market hubs are empty, almost abandoned, because alts don't buy anything. Rens, for example, used to be a place where the beautiful ISK could turn, but today, unfortunately, it is a wasteland.
Rens has always felt like a pointless market, it's 4J from the already established Hek...
@@captainbenzie That's kind of funny considering Rens used to be the more established hub.
I multiboxed Homefront ops sites for a week with 5 accounts. I will never do it again. It is rough to keep up with 5 ships in a dynamic environment while clicking until your mousehand hurts and you start to feel like taking a couple days off completely. Running abyssals after that felt so serene you wouldn't even believe. Having an alt to do scouting and such can be very handy but as you said, completely doable with a corpmate for example. I also prefer doing stuff with corpmates, it brings peolpe together and builds up the group. Nowadays I could say that I like creating content for other pilots more than doing stuff solo.
I tried to multi box 2 acount on logi and 1 dps it too much for my brain to handle lol
I multibox 6. They most def can pay for themselves. I don’t really see the point of the “cheating” or “it’s not fair” fights. Don’t be jealous. It’s really that simple. Not one person has had a solid argument that I’ve heard about not multiboxing. Until at least one person has a legit, thought out, factual reply.. that isn’t rooted in jealousy, I could care less man. lol.
Groups that gate keep membership based around multi-boxing, generally do so with a specific purpose. They have established goals they are looking to fulfill as an entity. It doesn't mean they're elite, or that they are better than other players just because they have this policy. Why they have it is for a set purpose. Honestly it feels as though people are in their feelings over rejection, without giving thought as to why.
A little late to the conversation, but I feel like I have something to contribute.
Since I started playing in 2007, I've always have had 3 accounts. One hauler, one 'main' and one support character for when I was 'soloing'. I only broke the bank in the last couple of years and now run 10 accounts simultaneously.
The reason I made the switch? There was an activity I enjoyed doing with my corporation and the individual who ran that particular activity decided they didn't want to anymore. And since I didn't have enough pull in the corp to bring the players online and go do the thing. I decided I'd multibox the bare minimum of accounts to solo the content. That way if I come up short on corp mates to run with me, the one guy that comes along can still do the activity.
Great reason to multibox!
re: keeping an eye on system entrances, you can do this with combat probes at the smallest radius posted at Gates or wormholes
Great tip!
I'd say Mining is disproportionately impacted by multi-boxing by the nature of Boosting. It's *much* more efficient to have 50 boosted Hulks mining a belt than it is to have 5 boosted Hulks.
As per the video, how is that different if it's a multiboxer or a corp of separate players?
Organization. The time spent of people getting together instead of one afker. The profits getting shared throughout a corp or fleet instead of concentrated on one person. Cooperation and fraternity of a group of people..
That is an understatement. Multiboxing can allow you to dominate disproportionately. How is it different. Imagine Multiboxing horde hoovering up all the veldspar in amarr space...or wormhole ratting every site so there is no content unless you go down the chain 7 systems (cause they have eyes everywhere).
@@captainbenzie Consolidation of resources for one thing. If 50 people are all mining the same resource that's 50 different sellers/producer. If *one* person is mining all the resources...
Also it's a force multiplier. Why does it have to be 1 player with 5 alts vs 5 players with 1 alt, when you could instead have 5 players with 5 alts? Especially considering that at least one person needs to be "sacrificed" to sit in a mining booster ship. Going from 1 Orca boosting 4 Hulks, to 1 Orca boosting *24* Hulks is huuuuge.
@@Done25. This is bordering a strawman argument. Go fly to any ore belt in HS and tell me how many people are sitting on that belt. I am a miner(and I multibox) and I can say 90% of the time NOBODY is touching those belts. the other 10% of the time it is just someone in a venture trying to mine up 2000ore for dailies. I would guess(cant prove obviously) that without multiboxing miners the economy would be quite brutal. Because there is not 5 other people wanting to dig. 1 person selling all the resources vs 5... silly argument because unless its ICE .. there isnt 5 other people willing to dig. Wont even bother with 24 hulk argument as I cant think of a belt of any resources that could sustain that. Let alone what your PC would have to look like to run so many.
eve have had multiboxing since as long time as i remember. Eve is such a niche game and i think ccp would loose a bit of money from the whales.
Would you please do a video that demonstrates how to correctly multibox?
Unfortunately, I don't multibox so cannot demonstrate it
Perhaps someone else will have seen that video and point it out here in the comment.
I personally multibox two accounts and I love it, but I also sometimes just play on one account if I want to relax because playing two accounts feels like balancing on a knifes edge, I have to have absolute focus to do it.
That's right. We only have 1 head to think. So playing the game with more accounts is an excellent practice toward higher IQ of a player.
No, simply because when there’s nothing going on in my alliance corp, I’m using an industry alt to make isk to help replenish my funds for pvp.
With alts & multiboxing I can dabble in different aspects of Eve that I wouldn’t otherwise tryout if it wasn’t possible without real other players.
It’s still very difficult to pvp while multi boxing multiple characters on grid.
Also many people don’t do more than 2 accounts, no one is rage quitting because of a few people that run 5+ accounts.
It’s often difficult to get a lot of people to go and fleet mine ore..
That sounds like a corp issue - we near constantly have mining fleets up. But that is congruent with my argument that multiboxing can help someone who doesn't have access to players to fly with. Either way, I don't see it as a negative
Whenever multiboxing is used to avoid interactions with other players, then I think it harms the game. Whenever it is used to increase interactions with other players, it's good. For other purposes, I'm neutral about it. Neccessity drives social interactions, and that is true for EVE as well.
Because no matter how many characters you multibox, the player is still a single player and can only pay attention to one thing. And multiboxers create the illusion of having many other people, but most of their characters aren't interactable.
I’m sorry to say I multi box mining, I go out with 12 accounts 10 miners one Rocco and one freighter to move the ice or ore back to the station.
I do not like people who multi box and use the multiple programs will allow you to ghost your mouse exactly over all accounts so if you press war on one account the mouse press on all of the accounts, if you can’t play multiple accounts as separate instances with you controlling one at a time then you shouldn’t be playing the game because that is the only way is not cheating. I have 10 monitors on my PC with the 12 accounts open playing the game and that’s the only way I enjoy playing,
I have a corporation with all my friends, we all go mining and we all multi box, to the point that we can go mining a ice belt and clear it in two hours max and then we normally wait around and do another one three hours later
Considering how CCP is in charge of their game, and are very assertive in continuing to make it profitable, they will do what they want. Which is to make money. They are clearly making money from this, and until this practice becomes a problem for CCP it will continue unabated.
At the end of the day CCP is a business, and the purpose of business is to make a profit, and as much profit as possible.
Like a certain troubleshooter said, " Multiboxers are either a benefit or a problem, if they're a benefit they're not my problem".
I used to run 4 accounts, but getting too old to bother with that nowadays. Just enjoying the game in alpha mode with one character nowadays.
I kinda agree with this. I understand why folks multibox, but for me it's taking a fun activity and making it "too" seriously 😅
I'd like it if they made multibooxing illegal and banned those accounts but they wont because it lines their pockets and pumps up their numbers. If I get caught in Eve's game of cat and mouse, its fine thats part of eve. But some homie who catches me because he had 10+ accounts running at once? it just feels bad to even deal with that and the only recourse I have is to do it myself or just stop playing
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
Sounds like you fucked up and are trying to find something else to blame. I'd even argue it's HARDER to effectively multibox PvP, so if someone multibox ganks you, they're a damned good player.
@@captainbenzie Its functionally different because this is an MMO and in eve in specific is made special by its player to player interaction. So getting ganked by ten players in ten ships feels better than one guy in ten ships because there is a decree of community interaction at play there. When its two players going up against one another it just feels different. Not unlike stream sniping for example where yeah functionally nothing has changed but knowing the otherside has an unfair advantage takes away a lot of the enjoyment. I would compare it to buying things from the market. There is a value in knowing the things you are using come from other players not just an NPC vendor even though the outcome is the same.
And frankly I don't appreciate the aggressive tone you're taking because I can turn that right back around on you and say you're just a trash player who cant eek out a win unless you impossibly stack the odds in your favor and you are in your feelings about people calling you out about it while hiding behind it taking oh so much skill to have multiple windows open
@@waffleswafflson3076 Except he even says in his video he only uses 1 acct when he plays... As far as player to player interaction, hard pass. EVE has a pretty toxic/elitist playerbase. Frankly I am amazed CCP allows some of the stuff to go into chat unchallenged. Homophobic, racial, you name it slurs.
@@chiisaiinu7327 Really? Have you not watched any of the streams on Twitch? Some of the most generous and friendly people are giving out free stuff every single day. You have two help channels in the game where people sit day in and day out to help new players. You have Mike with his Magic Bus roaming newbie areas to hand out free stuff to players. In other words, if the players around you are toxic, you're around the wrong type of players.
I agree with most you said here. One thing i would like to point out is, multiboxing is incentivized by CCP. When an MCT has the same price as another account, and that secondary account can be logged in at the same time, where the alt you used the MCT on cannot, (and im arguing only the price, not the fact that you cant login two characters from the same account), I would say CCP pushes for people having multiple accounts.
Absolutely valid and a good argument for how multiboxing isn't killing the game. A game Dev that's kept a game alive 22 years and wants at least 22 more isn't going to design their game in a way that kills it.
Everything can be abused, ahole shows up with 30 retrievers and an orca, all the characters have the same name numbered and they wipe out a whole ice field in 30 seconds, BAD... There IS A LIMIT ON RESOURCES...
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
How is 30 guys wrecking a belt fine, but one guy with 30 ships doing it bad?
@@captainbenzie It looks a lot like this gets to the cor of pay to win bias, one guy doing the work of 30 to strip mine resources away before other players have a chance to participate and gain from the resources. It also brings a thought to mind that excessive multiboxing could eventually cripple the economy of Eve if less players need less stuff while more accounts strip mine the resources preventing players who would otherwise engage in profiting and feeling like why should they bother anymore. Just a random thought that hit while replying about the pay to win aspect.
@@captainbenzie 30 guys are having fun while 1 guy with 30 accounts removes that potential for other players.
@@pcpproduction9071 except he really doesn't - there is no situation where one guy has cleared everything
@captainbenzie i don't think that's a fair statement. And also can't be about just mining rocks. I've personally been cockblocked by multiboxers huffing Gas in null. Null gas sites only have 1 site per region, if you care about the type of gas then there's literally only 1 site in new eden to huff at any time.
Cue a guy hoarding a gas site with 5 alts. My fit wasn't capable of a gas cloud exploding as frequently as this one was, I had to leave and come back 1 hour later and scan for a new site.
EVE is a game with a community-driven economy and community-driven politics in the form of territories, which in turn provide access to special forms of mining, rats, etc.
ISK are a massive form of resources. They (sometimes) determine the quality and quantity of ships you can send, for example, in the battle for the things mentioned above.
And yes EVE is not fair, but at least the most rudimentary "laws" should still exist, because at the end of the day it should be and remain a game.
If 1 person has so much impact on the above points, in my opinion, it gets out of hand ... I also find it somewhat questionable to find a method in an MMO that promotes not having to interact with other players.
I don't see multiboxing as preventing interaction. Those fleets are still gankable etc
I think the definition you're looking for is MMO spreadsheet submarines in space 👍
"if you can log in and have fun who cares" I care, the person that runs content with other 4 real people having our content stolen by a single person trying to make payroll to keep feeding their alts (this is very prominent on homefronts and incursions)
How would you even know? This genuinely reads like jealousy. What's different to having "your content stolen" by five individual players, and why would that be okay comparatively??
I'm an on and off player, but I listen to the talk. And this is a far sight better activity than people have practiced in the past.
Just out of curiosity, which incursions are you referring to? I didn't know anyone boxed the smaller ones, didn't think it was worth it.
Industry is basically meant for multiboxing. For starters, you are limited by the number of production/research/reaction lines per character, so buying a second account doubles your industrial capabilities. Hell, it more than doubles it when you factor in different skill specializations.
Invention requires science skills. Refining requires Reprocessing skills. Production requires... production skills. To max out these trees can take 1+ year each, so 3 accounts set up to specialize in one aspect of industry speeds that up. And if you're doing that might as well get a market alt focusing on the trade skills so you capture more profit versus selling to buy orders.
Then circling back to mining, the extremely low APM combined with how fleet boosts work essentially all but guarantees the activity scales well with multiboxing.
Ultimately, multiboxing exists because outside of PVP, EVE is passive and/or low APM and even within PVP, its far lower APM than is required of, say, a first-person shooter. The game design of EVE itself makes muotiboxing possible. Its not required, but there's a far smaller loss in per-character effectiveness compared to trying to multibox a FPS team, for example.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always looked at multi boxing as increased risk. Granted the player who is multi boxing is typically of higher skill, they will never be able to optimize the piloting of one ship when they’re managing 5. All that to say, if someone is bringing multiple ships to the field they’re risking more while having to manage more. When you have friends to bring to the table it creates some unique battles and results.
This! Exactly this! Folks seem to think it's easy and somehow reduces risk. You've got one set of eyes and hands working and entire operation rather than a full team.
I got into multiboxing since my first second corp CEO ran upwards of 12 accounts for mining. I was just blown away how he could clear mining Anoms with either an Orca or Rorq before scarcity. I have 7 total accounts, 6 are Omega (I pay the subs for them at at least 3 mo at a time) and one Alpha for my Alliance Home Defense group. I like having the versatility of what I want to do and which of my alts to do it on if my main is not able or not good at it. I think it is good for the game as it keeps me playing it, instead of only being restricted to one account with a max of 3 characters.
I think people have a problem with botting not multiboxing. I'd be very impressed to find a person using 8 accounts killing folks perfectly without using some sort of bot program streamlining all of the individual actions needed. If a person is actually multiboxing with 8 accounts more likely they're mining which doesn't require a huge attention span to do that correctly. Multiboxing is good for folks that don't want to wait for that 1 character to learn scanning, mining, manufacturing, and combat to do all of those things. The game does reward folks who are willing to use multiple accounts to make specialized characters around those themes. If that person is mutiboxing 8 accounts to run combat sites without a bot program, then I'll tip my hat to that person cuz that is a challenge to do that without losing ships. Even more so if that person is trying to pvp like that.
I agree with you, but the comments on this video show that it's not botting, it is genuinely multiboxing that upsets many 😂
Multiboxing is only allowed in EVE because it inflates player numbers. It looks good on paper. Since to multibox a new account has to be created, therefore adding a "player" to the stat.
Incorrect. Multiboxing is allowed because people would do it anyways. By allowing it, you put everyone on equal standing rather than those willing to go to dodgy sites or pay for software.
I much prefer to run DED sites in lowsec with multiple characters. It cuts the time down a lot; the more time you spend in space in a site, the more time you give someone a chance to form a fleet to catch you. And on top of that, it wards off smaller groups from messing with you.
Oh agreed that it has benefits, but equally, if I've got friends to help, then I don't NEED to multibox
I am a subscriber of yours and I do not multbox, I have been playing a couple of months and I would sure like to know where the hell all these friends are that you mentioned in the video, Cause I sure can't find them!
Join a corp!
I also just had a corrupted hard drive I wish you all the best luck in your gaming career ! :)
Thank you, it sucks but that's life haha
@@captainbenzie XD hahahaha I love the honesty :)
I don’t think that multi-boxing is an issue within itself for the exact reasons you provided. It can, however, make players feel like they are playing at a disadvantage unless they have multiple accounts/characters. Then you start getting the ThIs GaMe Is PaY2wIn comments.
Only if you see EVE as a competition rather than a collaboration of players making a universe. EVE isn't fair. It doesn't have rules like a competitive game. You can, and absolutely should, outnumber your enemies.
As an long time gamer I would say what is your definition of Pay2Win. The original way to define it was 2 people of equal skill start the same day. One has a credit card, one does not. Does the person with the credit card have an overwhelming advantage. In the case of EVE... based on that definition the answer is most assuredly YES. however I will say because EVE is so vast its not really a problem vs some of the old MOBO games where there was no way to escape "wallet warriors."
The problem with multiboxing is high sec gate camping. It's difficult to form up a 20 man fleet to sit on a high sec gate in caracals to sui on the 200m isk badger the isk value and risk vs reward is not in it. It is not difficult nearly as difficult to have 20 alpha accounts to do the same thing that then funnel that isk into one singular account. The gate camping is the problem. Anything and everything else is game imo, but this abusive style of game play needs to have steeper penalties.
How is getting ganked by 10 ships controlled by one guy any different than getting ganked by 10 ships controlled by different guys?
@@captainbenzie because you have to split the isk between 20 people, so their target priorities/possibilities change/their scope drastically widens. It goes from only being worth ganking 1bil isk cargo ships to 200m isk cargo ships, or some guy with a 200m mod etc. The required value of the target ship drops drastically. Also getting 20 people to sit on a high sec gate for hours on end 7 days a week to meet the dps requirement to break the tank on specific ships for the possibility of a high value module to drop is not going to be possible like it is possible for some guy doing it all solo for RMT purposes like it's their job. I have never gone into a gate camp got blown up by actual groups of people and been like.. screw those guys man. How dare they. Like the non consensual feeling I get from some mouth breathing neckbeard doing it on 20 alt characters. Just doesn't feel the same.
@@Infinite_War you seriously misunderstand gankers. They rarely give a shit about the loot. It's just about getting the kill, roaming with mates and having a laugh
And besides, EVE isn't fair, especially in PvP, that's the point
@@captainbenzie I'm talking from experience. I was the high sec ganker. We picked our targets based on wether we could afford to replace our ships and it was balanced against the amount of time we had to spend regaining security status. You clearly do not know how this stuff actually works, and are using an uneducated opinion on this topic. This isn't up for debate. What I'm saying is true. You are correct about roaming with mates which is why I find it funny that you are defending multiboxers. It's kinda wild that you are pointing out one of the glaring issues with multiboxing while simultaneously defending them. It should be difficult to do things on your own so you are forced to actually interact and play with other human beings. Their is a major difference between something being designed to be difficult and to feel unfair and actual abuse. Multiboxing for the purpose of sui ganking in high sec as an isk faucet is abuse.
multiboxing often kills mmos in the long run. it destroys the aspect of community.
I don't see how. What is functionally different between getting ganked by ten ships controlled by one player, or getting ganked by ten ships controlled by separate players? And in EVE, players are still interacting with each other
more ships in space = more things for people to hunt. I disagree with destroying an aspect of the community.
@@716JayDee but multiboxers are providing more ships. That one guy is providing ten.
@@captainbenzie The difference is the FC of the 2nd group had to convince 9 other players to fly with him (and he's probably going to split the loot with them) and how coordinated they are as a group can vary wildly from "Are they even in the same fleet?" to functionally very similar to a multi-boxer.
Do you think the guy who attacked your station would be able to convince 7 other players to come with him to blow up something that takes a very long time drops a very small amount of money (that now has to be split 8 ways...)? Probably not, unless they had ulterior motives.
I have 3 accounts so I'm not dead against multing or anything, but I think it's disingenuous to say it doesn't impact the community at all, because it obviously does. It's better for the game and the community if people have to team up to leverage an amount of force greater than what a single pilot can, the entire game is effectively built on top of this concept, so it's kind of weird to see people just disregard that fact.
I do think you should just be able to have some drone ships on one account that can do stuff like mining and scouting, that guy you are paying to watch wormholes isn't going to do that forever, it's not exactly riveting is it? I'm sure he would be having a better time blowing stuff up with an alt hole watching, although I grant this is EVE PVE we are talking about so the difference isn't that big... 😆
@@memitim171 we've been attacked by several groups, including larger fleets of players coming after our stations too, so... Yes. I think people will roam and look for PvP in any form.
For some folks, the rewards aren't the point, it's the gameplay.
This is my entire point, multiboxing is literally NO DIFFERENT to a fleet of individual players. In fact, I would challenge anyone to actually tell the difference.
WoW PvP is far too movement and keypress dependent to be done smoothly even in a 2v2 - you could do multi in a BG (eg holding a position) but you'd be a liability. Eve is a perfect balance for multi - still challenging but you're highly functional at least on a small number of clients - just enough in-game "fire and forget" functions. There is a lot of grindy stuff to do and scheduling around others can be a pain - guys want pew-pew in their limited game time, not scouting duty. I'd suggest newbs run 2 accounts for awhile and see what the advantages and learning curve/difficulties are once the learn the basics. Big quality of life benefits even if you don't fight with them as a team.
I have 12 characters on 4 accounts running on 2 PCs with 4 monitors. I live in shattered wormholes.
Multiboxing is the worst part of this game... But it's what keep the server up& running.
Without multiboxers the player count would drop drastically and sooner or later the game server will be shut down.
Why is it bad, though? What is functionally different between getting ganked by ten ships controlled by one player, or getting ganked by ten ships controlled by separate players?
Let me answer this: first, it's not so easy to get 10 people to fly with you. The other guy doesn't have that issue. Two, mostly in industry, 10 characters work for one person. This will never happen with 10 people as each person will want a piece of cake. And also because you can do the whole chain of production yourself there is no need to participate in market for components. I cant then produce much with one character if other payers don't sell their components.
Mining is the worst, no point to comment.
If you want to be competitive you NEED to multi box.
They allowed MB before they introduced plex. Keep plex, remove MB and encourage player interaction. At the moment it is mostly restricted to PvP. Multi boxing is killing COOP play in EVE!
And yes, I have strong feelings about that.
@EilthalearinKheru I think that comes down to the corp and the players in it. I play in a corp that regularly fields 8-10 mining players in our mining fleets. Some multi box miners, some multi box miners with scouts, and some multi box miners with members of the defense fleet. Others fly a single ship. This sometimes results in 10 -20 accounts being present between those players and still allows every person to get a piece of the corps profit. We don't argue over who gets more risk from the fleet. It's understood that what you bring determines what you get and everyone plays the way they want.
Day 2 player, and yeah multi-boxing sounds like a great way to take the game way too seriously and remove all the fun from it. It's a game, not a RL job with RL money.
"If he can log in and had fun, it doesn't impact you, does it?"
Hell, yeah. It does. When a single player have a 10/10 site that would take 4 to 6 people, and he do it ALONE on his full fleet setup, it take the fun of others 4 to 6 people. When you go to take down a gate camp, just to realize that one person is multi-boxing with 8 ships. Yeah, that's affect me.
You missed the major point on those who, like myself, don't like those who multi-boxing. And I'm not even going to talk about the economic impact they have.
But EVE was suppose to be a MMO, not a single player game. And yes, CCP is turning a blind eye for it because it make them a shit load of money. And I also disagree about the ''Eve is dying'' BS.
Multi-boxing is harmful because of 2 reasons. The first and more obvious one, is that it take the group focus of the game. Now, there are some activities that Multi-boxing is actually hard. But mining? Ganking? Ratting? Abyss? No. It doesn't require any human-skill to use MB. On a full battle, yeah, MB will fuck you up. But most activities doesn't require active inputs all the time. You can easily rat on a Gila or Ishtar half afk, and still do 50mil per hour. The second problem, and that one is less obvious and should be the real focus on CCP to ban MB, is the abuse of economic power. Not only for a better PC, but also for multiples omegas.
Now, I understand the "need" for MB on Scout for freighters, but that should be where the ''make some friends'' part of MMORPG should come into play. Also, for all those new players, you did lie. Depending on what he want to make, he will never reach the average level of income without MB.
So yeah. Multi-Boxing is real, is in the game and fill the need of some players. But in general, it is a bad habit that the community accepted as normal for lack of action of CCP.
You missed my point entirely. When you rock up to a 10/10 Site and there's a fleet in it, does it matter if that's 1 player or 6? Point is, you don't have the site. Simple as that.
As for the economics, it doesn't affect the economics at all. Again, if it's a fleet of 10 ships under 1 player, or 10 ships under 10 players, the content is still getting cleared at the same rate.
This, like most anti-multiboxing arguments, feels more like it comes down to: "I'm angry and jealous that someone can do something I can't". Replace any multiboxed fleet with the equivalent in actual players and NOTHING changes.
@@captainbenzie You are literally ignoring the logistics to form actual fleets here... Let's say a corp have 50 player that do Gate Camp. Multiboxing allow them to camp, with a full fledged fleet 50 different camps, and not something about 10.
But hey, if you really believe that any argument that goes against yours is jealousy, good luck with life, I guess.
"you can also do that with outher Players"
Is Just as cheap as an excuse as
"Its only cosmetics"
Companies need to make money. You'd rather they put subs up or sold non-cosmetic items??
@@captainbenzie every coorporation seeks to maximize revenue. this is not an argument.
You SAY Eve knows and are on top of script using multiboxers; but that is not my experience - I regularly see fleets of 30+ Marauders running multiple event sites across a cluster of systems, all the 3-ship groups are doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time in each site - I have lurked, watched and reported.
I have looked at the employment history of many of the players in this bot Corp, and they all joined on the same day, and all joined a newly created player corp on the same day; despite starting in different starter corps.
I spent over a week lurking, and AT BEST, there were 3-4 humans operating 155 accounts across 24 hours of the day.
I reported the entire Corps, and when Eve refused to do anything, reported individual accounts; I got over 50 banned, but the Bot Corp had fresh accounts up and running within days; all skilled up to operating Golems.
Eve Devs cannot NOT know what is going on; but they wont do anything unless a player brings a specific and provable report.
BTW, all accounts being used to multibox HAVE to be Omega if you are using a single PC; although you could get around this by using physically separate PCs, with one account on each.
Common misconception in gaming: "I see cheaters so the Devs aren't doing anything"
Reality is, bans happen in mass blocks. To ban individually and constantly is insanely high effort and makes it easy for scripters and botters to react with updates.
Instead, you do a ban sweep. And CCP does this. And it works. Yes, the botters eventually come back, but it hits them in their wallet more.
@@captainbenzie I have seen many legit multiboxers, running as many as 12 ships; but when you have 30+ Golems all called "Golem", how do you effectively control them without illegal scripts?
Not even "Golem1, Gollem2" etc, just "Golem".
i have run 8 pilots at a time and im fully agents multiboxing. losing a station to 1 guy with with alot of account is hard to swallow .it runes the eco gives one person god like power and is a missive unfair advantage .
It's only an advantage of you look at EVE externally as a competition. Firstly, EVE isn't a competition. You shouldn't be comparing yourself to anyone - measure your progress against where YOU were before, not who you find.
Secondly, how is that any different from losing a station to a fleet of multiple guys? You still lost the station. And arguably, it's going to be easier to beat a multiboxer since it's one dude managing so many accounts at once.
I can barely fly one lol.
Lmao same
Its not any harder than flying one ship, that's a lot of the problem.
@@alistairbolden6340 you've clearly never multiboxed if you truly believe this.
@@captainbenzie The only management required is getting each ship in the fleet to launch drones, after that you get them all to assist one target, your fc/main and that ship will be the one that locks and tackles everything. For movement, you are mainly just using warp to location and then just closing with your tackle ship. 95% of it is done on just one screen.
I did the same thing with making a single character who can do and fly alot, but took years to create. I would also say that progressively we all start with one character, learning the game and deciding our path. Once comfortable with the game then you decide to either abstain and stick to the tried and true single account living; I'd honestly recommend living with a active corp, solo living is rough in the social sense. Nice to have friendly back up haha... Or how deep you'd like to multibox, I'd like to recommend that keep it small, It's so flipping nice to have cloaky eye's while making money or haul your stuff while you are out on a fleet. Requirements for multibox is pretty silly, I think it is a eager desire to further press power projection.
i was just watching the scope and brought it up that i would so love to be completely into eve but the multiboxing just ruins it. i cant do anything out in the world cause 2 'players' will show up no matter what. literal pay 2 win. they dont even have to be that geared they just have more equipment slots and disable you from getting away
That's utter bullshit, sorry. I live in wormholes. I play on a single account. If you're doing pve content and someone warps to you for a fight, you are an idiot if you stay. They are PvP fit, you are not.
Stay frosty, avoid fights unless you're actively looking for them - in which case you should be in a PvP fit.
As for "pay to win", what if that second ship is a friend? Why can't you have a friend with you too?
EVE is an MMO. If you're playing solo, that's your decision, but you cannot get upset that a group of players in an MMO can do more than a solo player can - that's the entire point of the game.
@@captainbenzie open up a stream and see how many are multi-boxing. its expected.
I run a corp (75 people, peaked at 85! Still growing and all ~), I run 27 accounts so do think I got something to contribute!
Generally my stance is: play what you find fun! if that is a single account, all the power to you, is that multi boxing all the power to you too. Do you want to multibox at my scale? that is the only moment I say think twice. It is hard work and id advice against it unless you really freaking want to. Do I think a second or third account is insanely helpful? yes, but not required. Heck much further past 3 and you gotta already ask yourself question tbh. But again priority one is enjoy the game how you want to enjoy it. It is possible.
Exactly this
It is true that when you get past the tipping point of multiple accounts, you are always looking for the dudes in the white coats carrying a butterfly net to come give you a snug-fitting white coat of your own that allows you to hug yourself all day while sitting in a padded room...heeheehahahoho!
Planes don't need wings, they are insanely helpful but not required ....it's possible for a plane to taxi across the country so it's the same thing.
Algos multibixers in plexes calling. Have fun earning 1/2 rewards on each 5-man plex because of that one guy roaming 9000 ehp algos everywhere.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
Sounds like you're suffering from a skill issue. You try to run five characters simultaneously and see how that works out.
I agree with a lot of your comments. I play one account. When I joined a large NullBloc, they basically said it was a requirement for me to have a cyno alt in order to play with capitals. I left, never to return. Don't tell me how I can have fun in a game. Its a game. While its true that some people have fun trying to squeeze the most efficiency out of an area of play, its also fun to just fly around a single account and make friends. I would much rather sit in a belt with other people, than with myself.
if u take multi boxing away.. resources would dry up so quick the economy would be dead
I have two accounts with three characters. Now, I don’t have the time I used to, as I used to have 3 or 4 more accounts and would have alpha miners on them. But these days I only use two characters. One is my main and the other is skilled out for an orca and compression. I’ve never used more than one combat ship though.
I'm kinda the same, just use one account with alts for things like Jita trade
Gameplay wise? Yes it is, does the extra subscription keep the game alive? Absolutly/.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
For me Multiboxing entirely kills the immersion of the game. As an MMO Sandbox I have always imagined MY character with his own job/identity in the universe doing his thing that I trained/equiped for, and avoiding or engaging the challenges he can in this dangerous environment. The idea of a big scary universe is so much more amazing when you are an individual there being part of a big picture. Bigger challenges would require people to search for groups to do. Multiboxing just makes me feel that I'm minmaxing a silly meaningless videogame.
Thing is, in EVE, you are an immortal demigod. We have characters in the lore, like the Broker, who were known to run multiple clones simultaneously. Ironically, multiboxing is technically supported by the in-game lore.
The effeciency that multiboxing lends to one player is cheating the moment they interact with another player. The advantage multiboxing gives in that interaction destroys the community and the perception of needing skill to play the game. Its a corrosive blight on all mmo's. As to Wow, I've been in arena's that were dominated by one person with 5 accounts, all keybound to one keyboard with scripts. It kills the game.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
I think the big distinction here is the perception that all multiboxers use other utilities or programs to assist their control over all their accounts. That guy from the video who ran 8 accounts almost assuredly was for him to be effective in combat with that many. For me, I run 6-8 accounts for mining and I don't use anything extra besides the game client and a few screens. 2 computers to run the accounts and I'm constantly alt-tabbing to move ore around and target new rocks when they go down. I manually control all of my accounts. Even when I do multibox in PvE, I'm only using 2 accounts in combat with 1 following to salvage.
In your scenario, I would agree that that player would be cheating but not in mine.
@@captainbenzie Functionally there is no difference, your're dead. My point is the interaction is different when you are interacting with a live person vs a/the enviroment. Obviously we disagree on this. And I'm not trying to persuade you. But can you deny that this issue deters people from playing? That it lowers the enjoyment of the larger majority of players? The skill to multibox is real and yes they are paying for their accounts. Cool, but they create a toxic enviroment that real or not gives a perception of unfairness.
@@risingangelttv I think you got the gist of my point. Vs the game I have no issue with multi boxing. Its when its used against real people that I think its ethically wrong. Capt B mentioned that there is no way to get rid of it within the game, fair enough. That doesn't mean I'm required to think a multi boxer pvp'er isn't a dirtbag.
I agree. Multiboxing is not necessary or required to play Eve effectively and have fun. That said, I also don’t have a problem with it, with the possible exception of the incident you described where one player nearly single-handedly wiped out an entire fleet. That seems OP.
I have one account that I keep omega on. I have a couple of others to do specific things I don't want to skill my main on. You made good points, and I feel it offers more content to hunt if you look at the other side of things in LS or NS
nice video, good content, keep doing it!
Thank you!!
I can tell you with AOA in EE that a few pilots being able to field 50 Carrier/Super Carriers that it absolutely is ruining the game.
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
The issue with EE isn't multiboxing. It's power creep.
I am also active with five omega accounts in the so-called multiplexing approach and do not think that this falls under "cheating". This approach is simply an alternative to gameplay mechanics. I can fulfil the requirements in the respective context and have much fun playing the game! There is an evident approach on the part of CCP to support this accordingly. And yes, controlling these accounts in challenging situations is quite intense and requires a certain degree of skill (which the game as a single-account-mmo has yet to plan for). Anyway, I enjoy the game and have no problem with my approach ...
Hi Benzie! Nice video, as always. I'm sort of on the fence about multiboxing on the whole, but I think there's one point worth making that always seems to go unsaid in discussions on the subject. It has to do with the fact that EVE has certain activities that are generally regarded as "boring but necessary." I think you noted lighting a cyno as an example- it's absolutely critical to access certain aspects of the game, but once it's done, it's done, and there's really not much more for that character / player to do.
The problem I see with how much CCP has leaned into multiboxing (at least specifically with regard to this point) is that... EVE is a game! And moreover, it's a product designedfrom bottom to top by CCP and completely within their creative control. There's nothing about the physical laws of the universe that make it so that a cyno has to be lit in order to do X, Y, Z; CCP could change the game to eliminate it if they woke up tomorrow and decided they wanted to. In real life, this isn't the case- sometimes you just have to be the one holding dad's flashlight while he fixes the car even though you'd rather be doing something else.
It's a small point, but I think it speaks to a dynamic which lets CCP off the hook for ensuring that content in EVE is persistently.... fun! As I said, it is after all a game. Most activities should at least be some form of fun. And I get that it's a sandbox and a lot of the fun to be had in EVE is through meta content and making the content yourself as you see fit. But that doesn't mean that activities should be dull. Many EVE players joke about "winning" EVE because for many playing in a "efficient" fashion turns into a second job. Nothing requires that to be the case except for CCP's game design choices.
So I guess ultimately where I come out is that it is, and will always be, CCP's job to engage in "fun balancing," for lack of a better term. In other words, they should always be working to ensure that all roles and all activities in the game provide some level of fun, and aren't just "boring but necessary."
come now. were multiboxing banned most null and low corps would see their ranks thinned by half or more (not to mention what would happen to in-game player counts)...
Multiboxing is actively supported in the launcher and has been for as long as I've ever known
@@captainbenzie true that, probably more for the reasons i stated than anything else...
Horde encourages multi boxing to swell fleet numbers with additional rewards for fleet participation. But I’m not sure I’ve heard of anyone requiring it.
Completely agree, it is a game and it's meant to be enjoyed, not viewed as a chore. I find pleasure in mining azure plagioclase, just looking at my ship bringing in those rocks, and then selling them in the market. Most nights than not, that is all I do, in my one and only account.
The only true time i've ever seen a multibox requirement has been if you want to fly capitals for some large blocks, and its just that your capital flyer is typically an alt. So that escalations can happen more rapidly if needed. I know in the past before keepstars titans were basically "coffins" because you couldnt dock them so you had to have another toon if you wanted to play. But that was back before titans were so prolific.
I run 3 accounts normally just so i can use 2 toons as bridgers and another in a blockade runner or 2 mining and 1 in station as defence against belt rats..
I know all of these things could be accomplished with a corp but real life means i step away from eve for long periods of a time. Normally a few months so i try not to be burdensome to corporations by being inactive
I haven’t ever multiboxed but I think it would definitely make the game more engaging and it would get harder to manage with scale. Besides, miners harvesting ludicrous amounts of resources just makes the stuff I buy cheaper, so I’m not complaining.
I'm a sweaty loser without friends. I admit that lol. I plex my game by farming isk in game. But i also suck at the game and having a 15bil invoice to keep them up also eats a lot of time per month. But it's also the way for me to play in a wh with 2 accounts and feel safe to do things while my corp mates aren't online.
I'm socially awkward, so finding like minded people is hard. So even the 3 accounts i have in nullsec end up being me, myself and i because i find it hard to connect with people.
I have been playing eve since 2011 and i still love the game thanks to being the sweaty loser without friends (love this description sorry 😂).
It enabled me to enjoy the game a lot more because in the beginning, i wanted to do it all, as many people do when they start eve! But training everything on 1 account takes a long time. So i dedicated 1 account to frigates, destroyers and cruisers. Then 1 account to carriers (when they still were fun) and 1 account to batteships.
Then wanted to do wh life but needed to do so paying my omega with isk. So i got 2 new characters to do exactly that. And now i can enjoy a lot of things in eve without having any friends!
I understand people thinking they need more then 1 account but with friends and patience u really do not!
CCP just need to limit the amount of accounts u can multi
like 3 and it can be traced by ip
my issue is a one person gate camper
How is getting ganked by one guy controlling ten accounts functionally different to getting ganked by ten guys flying separately?
@@captainbenzie its easier to set up if u dont have to gather friends for it means it can happen more often to an annoying degree