EVE General Discussion

In this video at .29s it looks like he's using a macro on his mousewheel to both cycle through windows as well as activate a mouseclick at the same time...unless he's able to do 20 presses of each in 2 seconds without breaking the alternation. So yeah imho it's a valid ban from watching the video without even seeing the server logs.


Also I love his commentary:

"The changes are frustrating but not really effective"

"it ends up taking me about 2 minutes [to setup at the start of each site]"
"This site ended up taking me 19 or 20 minutes, the next site took me...like 18 minutes"
"I could probably have these sites down to 10-12 minutes apiece"

- So somewhere between a 10-20% efficiency nerf just from the setup times


"rattlesnakes using geckos"

- Another nerf to running time? Drone travel times + lower overall DPS and application including just targetting random NPCs with the fire and forget cruise missiles versus an NM fleet focus firing each target with almost perfect synchronisation.


"it's inconvenient because you end up having to manually control all your logistics"
"the most difficult part of it is when travelling"

- Made it less easy to use (= a plus for the multiboxers wanting a challenge, surely?) - but yes a further nerf to their overall efficiency and ease of use.


"What are you gonna do with all that isk, it's so hard to find pvp when you're multiboxing"

- Well, plex all your accounts, then just pvp one or two at a time with massive income buffs behind them...seems kinda obvious doesn't it?


Basically I don't think CCP did want to completely eliminate multiboxing, just nerf the efficiency of multiplexed setups which as shown above, is working completely as intended as far as I can see (even for people that look like they're using a macro setup)

From what I gathered with talking to the person (something CCP desperately needs to do), he is using a Logitech G600-type mouse to cycle his windows, which can be set up outside of the exefile.exe, which allows him to switch windows with one keypress, click on the "orbit" button with one mouseclick, and then switch again with another keypress. Alternatively, you can bind a key to cycle through videoFX windows in a given area, so that would work too. Of course, the "stored rapid keystrokes" clause is a strange addition because some players may interact with their client faster than others, and with a faulty-enough connection you can appear to have pressed F1-F8, for example, in a single second or less, so I do wonder how much stock CCP places in that clause. Additionally, he has since been informed of the "regroup" fleet function and he mentioned in a conversation that his fingers were feeling better now that he can just use "regroup" instead of cycling each window / videoFX.
He claimed Geckos give him better times than Sentries, something which I believe given the Gecko's very high stats and the Snake's drone bonus.
Something any veteran ISBoxer will tell you is that every time a player creates a new VideoFX setup, changes fleet composition, or changes fits, he suffers a penalty to his site times. As a player gets more comfortable with his composition/fleet/VideoFX, his site times improve, much the same way (for example) a new mission runner speeds up his times with repetition and familiarity with his setup.
The fastest VG boxer used HG Ascendancies and Warp Speed rigs. Versi is currently using tank rigs (I believe) and doesn't have Ascendancies currently, so he'll be slower. As he improves, he can drop the tank rigs and slap on T2 Hyper-rigs, and splurge for some HG implants, and he can get his site times down.
If CCP wanted to nerf the effectiveness of ISBoxers, we have handed them at least a dozen alternatives to the broadcast ban that would have a greater effect.

"That APM is not possible..."
Let me just stop you right here and direct your attention to the Grand Masters-league of Starcraft 2 players with APMs in the 600s and up. Ten or twelve years ago, you would have been laughed at had you claimed to have a 600 APM. New players don't have anywhere near the kind of APM that veteran players do, especially in solo frigate PVP for example. Constantly adjusting orbits and juggling overheating modules leads to some fancy finger-play.
As I said, a strict interpretation of the clause on CONCORD's retribution and the avoidance might ensnare Hyperdunking. I'm sure you're unaware, but a while back, you used to be able to avoid CONCORD's guns if you were quick and clever enough. I'm not 100% sure on the history of the clause, but I'm under the impression that it was added to stop those users from avoiding CONCORD. I'm not advocating banning Hyperdunking, as I agree with CCP's decision that you still lose a ship for your actions, and I'm saying that both as a ganker and as a freighter pilot who would be targeted by Hyperdunking.

Except no, that's not what I said.
Keypress 1 > Orbit
Keypress 2 > Switch clients, or switch VideoFX window / layout.
Keypress 3 > Orbit.

Counters are not macros. I fail to see how telling a program to stop doing a certain commands after X presses can be considered a macro. And a macro that doesn't interact with the client at that!

He was able to (for lack of a better term) burst-fire his APM up to 800 (40/3*60 according to my math and timing) because he was doing a very repetitive action in a very confined section of his window. Starcraft 2 players have to cover the entire width and breadth of their screen for that 600 APM (or higher. I'm not a professional SC2 player, i just obtained 600 from a quick google search, and I'll readily admit I'm **** at SC2 and my APM is probably near 100, 200 on a good day).
This player was just one example, however, one fo the WH players told me he has obtained the same efficiency (or as close as you can get in WH space with the randomness of blue loot and nanoribbons) as before.

Now your turn: Show me proof that ISBoxer is a "I win" button. Show me how it violates 6A3 as it has been interpreted as a per-person basis forever, or show me how ISBoxer violates 6A3 but regular multiboxing (not using ISBoxer) doesn't. And finally, show me how ISBoxer violates 6A3 while programs like EVEMon, Pyfa, EFT, Fuzzworks, and whatever that new market program/website don't violate 6A3. I await your response, and wish you the best in EVE.

Perhaps i should have been more clear:
Mouse button "1" - click orbit button
Keyboard button "x" - switch videofx layout, or cycle client (again, can be done without storing keystrokes)
Mouse button "1" - click orbit button

Please don't attempt to argue over something which you have no knowledge of. It's grasping at straws at this point, which only serves to underline your lack of substantial argument and knowledge on the matter.

e: Additionally, the OS function "focus window" is not a macro.

2 things.
1) When I timed it it was closer to 3 seconds. Admittedly I was using an external timer, not youtube's timestamp, so his APM would be closer to 800, not 1200. Again, comparing burst APM to over-time APM is about as bad a comparison as comparing a marathon runner to a 100-yard-dash contestant. There's a very interesting video on the differences between the two. I recommend it as a quick bio break video.
2) I specifically said that the APM of a player may be higher, as that number was obtained from a cursory Google search because I don't know what keywords to look for. Additionally, playing a RTS where you are spread out over a map and taking someone spamming a mouse key and a keyboard key as fast as he can without worrying about moving them around a screen does not a good comparison make. I brought up SC2 players' APM as a way to say "Look, these people have a higher APM than noobs in the Copper League (or whatever it's called), but that doesn't mean they're cheating or have an unfair advantage. To paraphrase Day9: "High APM doesn't make anyone a better player, but better players have higher APM because they have much better game sense and awareness. Newer players get sucked into the "APM = skill" fallacy, and think that being good in StarCraft comes down to interaction speed. Then, if they are unable to achieve a high enough mouse speed they are turned off and stop playing, or complain."
3) He had pre-selected one ship with the other accounts beforehand. The selection you saw in the video was a single ship, most likely the ship that was pre-selected, and he started orbiting the beacon on the selected ship, and when he spammed the orbit button, the other ships were being told to orbit the pre-selected ships.
4) Your constant use of ad hominems again only serves to underline your lack of a substantial argument. And no, "he earns 1.2b isk / hour, nobody can make that" is not a substantial argument as you can earn 25b or so in an hours work of super scamming, northwards of 8b / hour if you find a lucky officer spawn in nullsec (or an ALOD gank in highsec), and that 6A3 was never interpreted to be on a per character basis, only on a per-human being basis. Even if it *was* on a per-toon basis, the previous examples would only further reinforce the very bad Risk vs Isk balance of ISBoxing. CCP didn't come out in support of raw ganking for nothing. They gave players the tools, and players are refusing to use said tools.

Again, the reduced income can be attributed to, as I mentioned, the new setup, the unfamiliarity with the fleet comp / new methods, and the non-optimized fits and implants. I never really broke 600m isk / hour in my fleets when I ran VGs, but that was because I had tank rigs, mediocre SP, an extra 1600 and EANM in my lowslots, a lack of Ascendancy implants, and an unfamiliarity with my setup. Did I complain and attempt to dictate to the others how they should play? No. I asked questions, looked at fits, optimized my layouts, tweaked my fits and EWAR, and practiced. I would have waited a few months before making a final say about the ISK optimization myself.

There has never been an instance, recorded or otherwise, where an ISBoxer incursion fleet out-earned a non-boxed incursion fleet of identical composition, fits, implants SP, and raw player experience. The people who complain about ISBoxed fleets compare a fleet with razor thin tanks, no margin of error, and a head full of 6-7%s and HG ascendancies to a less organized, less optimized fleet with LSEs and 1600s.

I would like to pause and thank you for not calling it "ISBotter" or "that botting program".

As for the "line in the sand" argument, I recommend reading James 315's essay on the subject of the bonus room bans and FighterJets. He covered the topic very well in my opinion as to why there needs to be clear lines.
Additionally, nobody here has yet brought an argument that ISBoxer provides an advantage over an identical fleet of expert players that has not been shot down or been riddled with more holes than a supercarrier being shot by an AutoMach fleet. I've brought up multiple programs and how they can give a player an in-game advantage, and nobody has attempted to argue against it. Everyone's too busy running around screaming "muh asteroids" or "muh effort".

I'm not anti-boxing but I do believe it was out of hand in terms of scalability and ease of use before. I do bare-bones boxing myself with two screens, no third party software and I actually appreciate watching the dedication of seeing someone's mouse dart all over the screen and managing a large fleet like in the video - that IS skillful although as I already pointed out, it probably does breach the EULA in certain methods he uses.

With regards to altering the UI as ISboxer allows, I'm really kind of torn; it's absolutely bastardising the game and making it pretty much unrecognisable and facilitates players by allowing setups with everything nicely grouped and positioned. In this respect it leaves a 'pure' multimonitor setup in the dust in terms of ease of use BUT it enables people to do this without having an expensive multimonitor setup or suffer the disadvantage of having to alt-tab manually and so in that respect it's for the good of the game.

In terms of the change CCP made, I absolutely back it one hundred percent.

If you multibox just for the enjoyment of managing multiple accounts then this pushes you away from the easy one-click-alpha-everything, broadcast-reps-and-rep-with-all-your-logi-with-just-2-clicks gameplay that preceeded it and into actually managing the multiple accounts individually. It's increased the challenge of actually running a fleet hasn't it? It's increased it so much that people now can't manage their guns AND logistics at the same time and so have to resort to drone assist for their DPS. It's increased the challenge so that it's no longer possible for one person to fly 50 NM's into HQ sites. Why are multiboxers crying about increased challenge again? I thought you enjoyed this for the challenge?

OK some people lost out in terms of invested isk and RL money - but that's really nothing new from Eve there - there's a bunch of threads of people demanding sub time/cash back from CCP because their carrier now gives them fatigue or they don't need XYZ SP anymore because their FOTM isktar was nerfed into oblivion - at the end of the day anything in-game can be traded, including the N number of characters you trained upto perfection for their specific role in your fleet AND you already made a killing in terms of income from them before the change. I've just finished training all my Caldari subs, and medium rails upto V on my two mains, "Oh well, time to finally train that Loki I've had my eye on" is my response to the upcoming Tengu nerf.

What do you mean by scalability and ease of use? ISBoxer is not "plug and play" software, as any one of us can tell you. It takes time and effort to make it work smoothly like you saw in the video. ISBoxer is no paradigm of ease-of-use. There's a lot of boolean-type logic behind the GUI, and the GIGO Theory is hard at work there.

Unfortunately, you demonstrate a lack of understanding when you start to talk about running fleets and alpha ships. First, I've only met one person who uses alpha ships in PVP (1400 Nados, rail nagas, stuff like that, not overwhelming DPS). Everyone else has to brick-tank their ships for PVP as they cannot respond to reps as fast as human logi can adapt to an FC switching primaries. This sluggish response becomes a massive chink in the "armor" as soon as you add EWAR into the pot. That's a fairly exploitable weakness, and would, to a reasonable person, be a sufficient penalty to counteract a perceived advantage, real or otherwise. Alpha-doctrines are used in normal PVP because of the reactiveness of real logi. The ability to take a ship off the field before it can catch reps is powerful, but not used in ISBoxer PVP fleets.

We are "crying", as you say, because there is no logic behind this ban, no evidence, no facts, no reasoning, nothing at all to explain this change other than the self-admitted whining and ranting of a CSM member.
We are getting banned for following the new interpretation of the EULA. One of the people who was instrumental in creating the new setups was banned for his use of the new setup, and he had all his ISK drained out of his account by CCP even though there is no such clause or mention of removal of ISK in the new EULA language / interpretation.
We were promised that CCP would be able to detect the difference between someone using Round Robin (which is, by CCP's own definition, allowed, but is currently being persecuted) and straight broadcasting.
We were promised BY FALCON that we would get a chance to sit down with CCP and discuss the issues at hand.
We attempted to make contact with CCP to find a reasonable compromise or solution to this change, but were ignored.
We were told that this program breaks 6A3 in a non-specific, non-measurable, and vague way, which has always been interpreted to us by GMs and DEVs alike to be on a per-toon basis, not a per-human-being basis, while at the same time we see programs such as EVEMon, EFT, PYFA, Fuzzworks, and now this new market tool, give solid, measurable advantages that can be quantified, tallied, and tossed in a graph, and we're told these are alright.
We were being banned for rapid use of VideoFX, while at the same time a CCP Dev is working on a program that duplicates the functionality of VideoFX and ISBoxer's window arrangement feature.
We were told CCP does not endorse third party programs, while this CCP Dev is working on such a program.

I really do not understand what you are trying to say when you talk about your Tengu skills, as you can still run Tengus in missions and anoms, while we're getting banned and removed from the game. If CCP removed the Tengu completely from the game and didn't reimburse the SP, you might have a case, albeit a thin one. You'll notice, in the thread about fighters, that there is a killmail of a Skynet Supercarrier. Not exactly risk-free.

you sir, are just dumb, or stupid. not sure what it is.

i am using a Special designed Piece of Hardware with 120 keys which i can Setup to what ever i want.

i am Setting ONE command per key per box.
i am easily up to 500 apm if i have to with that using my 10 fingers i have from mother nature.
first row from left to right activates F1 on each box
second row from left to right activates shift F1 on each box

so tell me. am i cheating? macro using? broadcasting?

as i stated before, i am flying 10 boxes. not cause i cant fly more. my Hardware is as potent to fly single hq incursion with 40 pilots.
i just dont feel the Need to do so,

10 boxes are the Maximum i can fly concentrated while fcing the rest of the fleet
1 box is just not enough for me, i fall asleep during that.

so for me it is the challenge to fly 10 boxes without making mistakes. keeping up a good Performance.

and again. i could fly a lot more. i just dont want to.

and isk. well. scamming, Station trading makes much more iskies than multiboxing with isboxer in incursions.