Player Features and Ideas Discussion

While I get what you're saying, I don't think it holds up at all in Eve. Players seek to automate pvp, whether it is suicide ganking, bombing runs, or even battlecruiser gangs. People seek to automate pve, in incursions, in wormholes, in mining. Practically everywhere that you have a ship in space and are actively doing task, players seek to automate it. Not everyone, no, but enough for it to be brought up frequently. Which leaves us with three solutions to change this, we do as the OP suggests, and take the strategy and patience out of eve, replacing it with rapid RTS style clickfest minigames, we take out any degree of actual player activity, or we ban players from using multiple accounts or software that facilitates it in any way. Because frankly, mining with 11 accounts is not only completely doable, but not that big of a hassle. Window management is the real benefit of isboxing. Fleet warping already allows us to warp all 11 miners at once. With crystals, we dont want all 11 miners on the same asteroid anyway, and mining cycles often finish at different times because asteroids deplete, and that hulk has to target another roid.

So, looking a little deeper into it, this really is just another isboxer is bad thread, except this one contains ideas, which are arguably worse for eve, than the current system. If you're going to introduce an active element, sure, that's great. Let's go for it, but one where the faster you can click stuff the more results you can get? Wrong game.

I wouldn't worry about that too much, the performance of eve is tied to 1 second server ticks. "Faster you can click" mechanics will never happen in eve for that reason alone, far too much is tied to that 1 second refresh.

I am sure I read somewhere that the IGB is going soon or CCP has talked about removing it.

Isoboxer topic X^(y+1)

Thread has been moved to Features & Ideas Discussion.

I would advice the OP to change the thread title to something better reflecting the actual proposal. Like 'Ad mini-games to negate the need of multi-boxing' or something like that. As it is now, most forum users cringe at the name ISBoxer....

If anyone thinks that ISBoxer is a problem, then why the problem itself is not tackled? Ban ISBoxer and be done with it. THEN we can focus on changing game mechanics in order to increase fun and engagement level, NOT because the changes are caused by the ISBoxer itself.

Please note: The above statement is only pointing to the danger of changing one of the core mechanics because of how minority of players use that mechanic. If a mechanic needs to change it should be done for and because of the betterment of the mechanic itself. I have no strong opinion on ISBoxer itself or its use in EVE because I think that it does not have much of an impact on a larger scale and is thus irrelevant.


Minigames are not the way to go, because they get repetitive and boring pretty quickly. In their base, they are not much different from captchas. They re-playability is very low and is not a mechanic that should be included in a persistent universe game that lasts for years.

Sure, some of the "interesting" mini-games are successfully implemented in single player games, but try to play one single player game for 8 years (this is how much I play EVE, for example), try to force yourself to play a mini-game in it for 567,937th time and see what happens.

I like to re-play games that are good. Take Deus EX: HR as an example, with their hacking mini-game. I have re-played that game at least 7 or 8 times and after the second or third replay, I always chose alternative ways to get the objective done without activating the mini-game whenever I could. Why? Because a mini-game is interesting and engaging when its fresh and unexplored. Once you get everything it has to offer, it becomes a chore that you want to avoid. That's not something you want for the part of the game that sustains the whole economy and player's capability of building pretty much everything in the game, like mining is.

If not a mini-game, then what?

First of all, I don't feel like some of the mechanics that are affected by ISBoxer MUST be changed at all costs. I've emphasized "must" because I have nothing against a change if it brings more fun - it may be good to bring a bit of fresh air in order to boost player's interest in that part of the game, but it's certainly not "a must". The current mining mechanics is time tested for many years and it has found its place for each player that engages in it. For some players it's something to do while:

• talking on TS
• planning their next activity
• updating or browsing the market
• doing industry
• building spreadsheets
• planning skill queue
• playing with EFT and browsing fits
• analyzing Dotlan maps and activity
• reading game tutorials and advices
• learning about the game on forums, wikis and other relevant sources
• watching EVE related videos

I don't think it's bad to have mining in its current form just because it allows semi-afk gameplay, because that gameplay allows players to be involved in multiple parts of the game simultaneously, which is especially important for players who are new and learning the game. I know it from my own experience from 7 or 8 years ago - to have something to do to progress in the game while learning about or exploring other aspects of the game was a major motivator for learning and exploring, regardless of how little benefit I had from mining activity itself. It made me, as a new player back then, feel like I'm actually a part of the community by doing something while learning and not just passively reading tutorials about a new complicated game which was already several years old and in which I didn't belonged to (yet).

Today, it serves me as an non-engaging outlet from daily RL work / activity. Sometimes I simply don't feel like doing anything engaging, whether in the game or out of it. So, mining works like an outlet to sit and slow down for a couple of hours while reading about EVE politics, posting walls of text on forums () or just browsing music. It's not that I expect to earn much ISK from it (doing it on a barely trained alt with a single Skiff in some God forgotten back pocket of highsec), but it's enough to keep me in the game as a veteran. Without a non-engaging outlet like that, I wouldn't even want to start the launcher. In a period when I don't have much time to play during the week and not wanting to do anything engaging when I have time because of RL fatigue, mining in its current form simply keeps me from just letting the subscription lapse. I wouldn't call it quitting the game, because EVE has been a part of my life more than you could possibly know, but just putting the subscription on hold until I had more time for more engaging parts of it... and in my case this lack of time for more engaging gameplay started about 2 years ago. If it wasn't for semi-afk activities like mining I wouldn't be subscribed for about 2 years now. I'll let you guess what would happen to my interest for the game or keeping track of all the changes in it if I'm not subscribed and part of it all even in the slightest amount.

Let's answer the question now "If not a mini-game, then what?"

Well, it's more complicated than a player with no monitoring tools or metrics about large scale player behavior and habits, its effect on CCP's revenue and global in-game economy affected by ore extraction can handle. If you want to change a feature, any software feature, not just some in-game feature, you must have data on how that feature is used, how it affects the ability or willingness of your users to use the software, which demographics use the feature and for what purpose. Only then you can do brainstorming on how you could change the feature while keeping the current uses and demographics and ultimately expanding it. The biggest mistake you could make as a developer is to hope to attract new demographics for a new version of the feature while ditching the old.

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If you're bored doing mining you're doing it wrong. EvE is supposed to be multiplayer which is where the fun in mining comes from. Adding a minigame to mining might make solo mining in highsec slightly less boring (or arguably, significantly more annoying) but it will probably totally screw nullsec mining fleets.

In nullsec, one needs to pay attention to more than just your mining lasers so adding a minigame which takes all your attention will end up causing a lot of miners to get popped as they can't concentrate on their surroundings, which they need to do.

So in nullsec mining fleets, where you need to pay attention to local, intel channels, fleet channel, comms, fleet logistics etc, adding a minigame would be freakin' terrible.

I'm not sure adding a miningame to mining in order to discourage ISboxer is worth screwing over all those that mine solo or in groups in nullsec.

I know I don't look like but I have my own perfect orca booster and 2 exhumer miners. So I know a thing or two about how mining works and yes, you don't have much time to be bored or AFK when you juggle their cycles and ore holds. And that's how I know profitable AFK mining is a myth.

I also know that those 90-ish seconds of waiting for cycle to finish could be for example spent on planning how to maximize yield by moving extractors/refining energy levels/calibrating frequencies of crystals for next cycle. Call it mini game if you want but in my mind it doesn't look like that click sh!t we have in hacking sites at all.

Whoa... I mean your point is terrible but AoE challenge mode sounds amazing