EVE General Discussion

Making mining a mini game thats involved simply cannot do. Say you can now only control 1 out of 3 or even 4 accounts manually. A lot of people would be happy right? But this means that if resource acquisition would have to either increase 300-400% or prices would, supply and demand rears its ugly head. Also if you can make the amount of 3 or 4 accounts with only one account then the relative value of mining itself would be very high, in fact the rorquals became a very good example of this. Making a few hundred mil isk/hr and then getting nerfed twice. Still good isk but certainly not noob fare nor high sec mining. In high sec there is literally no equivalent but more accounts.

So in the end you are stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Plus more subs pay CCP more so you can see why CCP will curtail excessive multiboxers but never truly get rid of them nor really want to. Its a real catch 22 here.

I am a multiboxer myself. I have mined ice in high in the old days with a 9 man fleet and even did this with ice after the changes for a while. I have mined in null with a nice sized fleet too. I regularly have multiple clients and monitors going. I never thought I was going to but I got bored with the game the way it was as I had done enough of the same and this was different. Now if I had to downsize clients I would get bored frankly, badly. Micromanaging until I literally burn out on something building it up is most of the fun I have in the game atm. I have never used IsBoxer, I had ideas too but never did thankfully, and find that scripting and ISBoxer does offer too many easy advantages to players and was happy to see broadcasting getting the nerfbat frankly.

I think your argument stems from your dislike of a single person being too efficient at something though. You wish to nerf their success because you dislike it personally. This is just hate on a playstyle at best. As you have stated that you dont mind losing resources to many other players just not to one person and consider it an unfair advantage when you have the same opportunities to do the same thing. I can understand why you think its unfair but it really isnt. I also like where CCP is going and has gone to curb some of it but not to reduce it to ashes.

Being able to manually play multiple accounts, as another has said, takes skill especially in PvP as losses stack up really quickly and wiping an entire fleet of your own accord over a single mistake can hurt quite a bit. I lost a legion and an eos in a WH once and then had to pod both toons as the hole had collapsed and I got jumped while scanning a new one and hadnt found an exit. One pod was a mid grade set Id forgotten to jump out of too. This was many years ago when it was worth a bit more though.

So I think that CCP should look into more ways of curbing automation, scripts or broadcasting but if someones good enough to do it manually I say let them explore the challenge.

I wonder myself why is CODE ganking ventures all around highsec and completely ignoring the bot mining fleet mining ice...

Back when I mined Ice in HS, (surrounded in my crappy ship by ISboxer fleets) I never once saw CODE or anyone else aggress. Was super safe, and the entire operations ran like clockwork.

Even though it was an area with 3 icefields in close proximity which I would think would have been ideal for farming miners.

I was the only ******* there, ever, occasionally stealing from idiots that can-mined or bumping just to alleviate boredom and spit in the eye of Isboxers or trashtalking/threatening in Local.

More recently, Hilmar himslef boasted about how EVE's unique daily users have gone up by a good amount. Of course, we know that those users are mostly playing for free, but in terms of health of the game, having a lot of users loggin in doesn't necessarily reflects in PCU.

PCU is, to say so, the maximum capacity of the place, whereas unique daily logins are the transit at the palce. A train station may not have room for more than 10,000 people a time, but as that epople goes in and out continuously, the station could see 200,000 individuals going through each day. Thsi is why selling stuff in train stations is a good idea, even if people stay for a little while, the daily volume is so high that you'll sell a lot.

So let's say that EVE is shifting from a model where what matters is people staying logged in for long and doing lengthy stuff, to a model where it doesn't matters how long they stay as long as they give money to CCP for it.

In that context, PCU would be lower (since players log in for short so there's less chance that many of them concur at a given time) but income would be higher since those 5-minute players would be buying SKINs and skill injectors and whatever CCP sells.

Really that's something we can't tell for sure as daily logins are not released. More and more "casuals" could raise CCP revenue and at the same time diminish the PCU.


PS: on the other hand, there's one third number that is following the same trend as PCU, and that number are new characters. I'll need to think on what would mean less concurrency and less new players from the "more people loggin in for less time" concept of income.

Icebergs don't have that issue, as each one holds 140+ cycles of mining. It was quite funny to see 20 or 22 Skiffs suddenly fire on the same iceberg... all at once. Unless it was your iceberg, of course.

There are ways to deal with large multibox fleets, even in hi-sec. It's not jjust a case of 'if you can't beat em, join em' - there are ways to get rid of them too.

If these fleets are such a problem for you, then why don't you use the tools available to get rid of them? Bumping is dead easy, and fielding a fleet of gankers is a good method to drive them away, too. While these tactics won't work 100% of the time on the best players, they are very effective tactics against many of them.

If you can't be bothered to do what it takes to counter them, then you're clearly not that bothered by them, or you're just not that invested into the game anyway.

Here are some questions I have:

1) Does multiboxing and/or botting hurt CCP's income? Or does it help CCP's income?

2) Does multiboxing and/or botting drive up the prices of PLEXes, or drive them down?

Thanks.

+1

Not only to put a spoke in the wheel of the bots but an excellent suggestion for removing the tedium out of mining.

I mine but only when I have to and any relief from the boredom would be a real benefit.

Something like this, but where the player doesnt know which hex is which for % value, except by process of elimination, as the hex % value remains the same per rock/ice.

http://imgur.com/Klh4hzj

Result:
-Scripts/bots have trouble getting past the additional UI gump.
-Lazy afk miners will usually get less yield.
-Attentive miners can find the +3% yield option.

1) Legit question:
I was away for awhile, and it just hit me I havent seen any ore anomalies since my return.
Did CCP remove them, or did I forget that I filtered them or something?

2) Probing has already become too much of the game.
I get what you mean, but probing itself gets tedious, especially when it starts to be a part of everything.

3) In my proposal, and the image, all you need to do, is click a hex.
Simple as that.

+/-3% per cycle is substantial over time, but its hardly crippling.
If you care enough, you can adjust your hex target on your next cycle.